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clean up

verb

Simple meaning

To pick up a mess.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

kleenuhp

Say the bold part a little louder.

US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈkliˈnʌp

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

verb

  1. Make oneself clean, presentable or neat

  2. transitive

    To make an area or a thing clean; to pick up a mess; to tidy.

  3. Make a big profit; often in a short period of time

    “The investor really cleaned up when the stock market went up.”

  4. intransitiveidiomatic

    To make a large profit; to win by a large margin, or to win a large amount, especially in gambling. Also clean house.

  5. transitiveidiomatic

    To make something less corrupt or unseemly.

  6. intransitiveidiomaticcolloquial

    To become clean, handsome, smart in appearance, e.g. for a special occasion, especially when it is out of character to be seen as such.

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Make oneself clean, presentable or neat

Used this way, clean up is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
No strong connotation
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.