clean house

English

Pronunciation

  • Audio (General Australian):(file)

Verb

clean house (third-person singular simple present cleans house, present participle cleaning house, simple past and past participle cleaned house)

  1. (intransitive, literally) To clean the interior of a house.
  2. (intransitive, figuratively) To reform a workplace, organization, etc. by removing undesirable personnel or procedures.
    • 2025 April 21, Jason Horowitz, Jim Yardley, “Francis, the First Latin American Pope, Dies at 88”, in The New York Times‎[1]:
      Francis was elected in March 2013 after the resignation of Benedict XVI, the first pontiff to step down in nearly six centuries, amid turmoil and intrigue about secret lobbies and financial chicanery. The cardinal electors sought a reformer with a strong administrative hand, but few anticipated how Francis, then the 76-year-old archbishop of Buenos Aires, would blend reformist zeal and folksy charm in a push to clean house and transform the church.
  3. (intransitive, slang) To win overwhelmingly.
    • 1981 September 16, Devo, “Through Being Cool”, in New Traditionalists:
      Time to clean some house,
      be a man or a mouse,
      waste those who make it tough to get around.
    • 2012, Erika Napoletano, The Power of Unpopular:
      Some companies that others perceived as being late to the party really cleaned house: Facebook was after MySpace […]

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