adverb
-
in a fair manner
-
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:
Gas burns more cleanly than diesel, and it offered a means of complying with new regulations due to come into force on sooty pollutants, known as NOx and SOx.
From BBC ● Sep. 8, 2026
It can be made cleanly by cleaving the hydrogen out of water using clean electricity.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 17, 2026
“Establish Florida domicile first, cleanly and provably. Then time the big withdrawals for after that’s done. The home sale and the distribution strategy aren’t two decisions — they’re one decision with two moving parts.”
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 8, 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
It is sharp enough to split a virus cleanly in half, like a razor blade going through a peanut.
From "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston
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
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 Harold Frederic
There are also, however, cleanlier families, in whose sleeping chamber the air is not so disgusting.
From The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II by Alexander Leslie
The little inn was cleanlier and better kept than many of the more pretentious ones.
From British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, Wales And Scotland by Thomas Dowler Murphy
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
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
This toilet was as elaborate and painstaking as that of the cleanliest of cats or squirrels.
From The Watchers of the Trails A Book of Animal Life by Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
He was the cleanliest and neatest boy at the yeshivah.
From The Rise of David Levinsky by Abraham Cahan
Their churches and chapels are the best built, the finest adorned, and the cleanliest kept, of any churches in the world.
From Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe, Wife of Sir Richard Fanshawe, bart., ambassador from Charles the Second to the courts of Portugal and Madrid. by Lady Anne Harrison Fanshawe
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.
