adverb
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in a fair manner
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easily or smoothly
the screw went into the wood cleanly
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of cleanly
before 900; Middle English clenlich ( e ), Old English clǣnlīc, equivalent to clǣne clean + -līc -ly
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
In a tense opening set, Sabalenka bristled with frustration early on as unforced errors crept into her game while Pegula settled quickly and struck the ball cleanly.
From BBC ● Sep. 11, 2026
“Pulling in the language from the posting shows recruiters and hiring managers you’re a genuine fit for the role — and helps your résumé read cleanly to an applicant-tracking system along the way.”
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 11, 2026
It can be made cleanly by cleaving the hydrogen out of water using clean electricity.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 17, 2026
It maps on pretty cleanly because a lot of the cases that people really like involve the court enforcing federal legislation.
From Slate ● Jul. 13, 2026
Brown hair brushed neatly to one side, eyes dark like a shark’s, a hard wedge of a naked chin, his cheeks cleanly shaven.
From "The City Beautiful" by Aden Polydoros
To this Gargantua answered, that he had taken such a course for that himself, that in all the country there was not to be found a cleanlier boy than he.
From Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 1 by Peter Anthony Motteux
Nature would do that cleanlier; and waxwork more powerfully!
From Earthwork out of Tuscany Being Impressions and Translations of Maurice Hewlett by Maurice Henry Hewlett
His hair and beard were freshly trimmed, and he had a cleanlier look than we have hitherto noticed; moreover, his expression had lost a little of its habitual sullen truculence.
From Till the Clock Stops by J. J. (John Joy) Bell
Sir, I Had rather like the first best; not onely because it is cleanlier, but because it reflects least upon the other party, which, in all jest and earnest, in this affair, I wish avoided.
From Letters to Severall Persons of Honour by John Donne
It has a higher back than the domestic hog, and cleanlier habits; an odoriferous gland on the loins, and three-toed hind feet.
From The Andes and the Amazon Across the Continent of South America by James Orton
Their cleanliest monthly average is 54 tons of dirt to the square mile.
From Time Magazine Archive
The gentle Maldivians are among Asia's best-fed, cleanliest and healthiest people.
From Time Magazine Archive
She, that was the cleanliest creature in the world, never shrank now if you set a close-stool under her nose.
From History of John Bull by John Arbuthnot
Another time, however, I will visit neither the one nor the other; but take up my quarters at the King of Wirtemberg--the neatest, cleanliest, and most comfortable hotel in Stuttgart.
From A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three by Thomas Frognall Dibdin
He spent thus by far the cleanliest and most sane years of his wayward life.
From Rest Harrow A Comedy of Resolution by Maurice Henry Hewlett
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
