Houseclean

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To give a home a thorough cleaning from top to bottom ; to rid an organization of unwanted people or practices
2. To scrub and tidy a dwelling completely ; to clear out undesirable members or elements from a group or company
3. To clean a house in a thorough, full-scale way ; to purge a body or institution of those considered unwanted

Etymology: "Houseclean" is a plain compound of "house" and "clean," put together to name the job of thoroughly cleaning a home's interior. Both parts are ordinary Old English-derived words, so the term needed no special coinage: a householder who scrubbed floors, dusted and tidied an entire dwelling was simply cleaning the house. The verb is used as a single word, usually without a hyphen, which is how it appears in modern dictionaries. Its meaning stays close to its parts: it refers to the whole-house cleaning rather than a quick tidy of one room, and it can be used for both the act and the result of the work.

Synonyms: clean, tidy

Antonyms: dirty, soil