clean

Clean is what a plate is when the washing-up has worked: nothing left on the surface, no grease, no marks. A clean shirt out of the drawer, clean hands before dinner, a window you can see through again.

Clean is not the same as tidy, and the two are worth keeping apart — a room with clothes all over the floor can be perfectly clean, and a tidy room can be filthy. As a verb you clean the kitchen, clean your teeth, clean a cut before the plaster goes on. The word also means free of anything wrong: a clean driving licence, a clean record, a clean drugs test. And free of roughness: a clean cut, a clean catch, a clean break in a bone. Thrown in front of a verb it means completely — I clean forgot — and to come clean is to admit at last what you have been sitting on.

Phrases it lives in

• come clean — admit what you have been hiding
• a clean slate — a fresh start with nothing held against you
• as clean as a whistle — completely clean — or completely innocent
• keep your nose clean — stay out of trouble

Also practised as

• adjectiveFree of any dirt — fresh from washing.