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:
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
The questions that define civilizations don’t always announce themselves cleanly.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 9, 2026
Sharia-compliant funds make the point even more cleanly.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 6, 2026
The slender and rangy left-hander Kemp, almost Ben Stokes-like with a flowing bat swing, hits cleanly straight or, as shown with her two sixes against Scotland, over mid-wicket.
From BBC ● Jun. 20, 2026
The vibrasaw purred through heavy vines, parted tangled underbrush like a comb through wet hair, and sliced cleanly through metal when the odd misstroke brought the cutting edge down onto the track.
From "Uglies" by Scott Westerfeld
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 Orton, James
Under the painful surface-blur of wretchedness and fatigued debauchery, she traced reflectively the lineaments of the younger and cleanlier countenance she had seen a few months before.
From The Damnation of Theron Ware by Frederic, Harold
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 Donne, John
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 Motteux, Peter Anthony
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 Bell, J. J. (John Joy)
The gentle Maldivians are among Asia's best-fed, cleanliest and healthiest people.
From Time Magazine Archive
Their cleanliest monthly average is 54 tons of dirt to the square mile.
From Time Magazine Archive
I have grown to know that "Jones'" is the cleanliest place in the Excelsior village, and yet to our thinking it lacks perfection.
From The Woman Who Toils Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls by Vorst, Marie Van
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 Arbuthnot, John
He spent thus by far the cleanliest and most sane years of his wayward life.
From Rest Harrow A Comedy of Resolution by Hewlett, Maurice Henry
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.
