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:
“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
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
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
I couldn’t fig- ure out exactly what this word meant, whether it meant broken in one or several places, cleanly or badly, and I didn’t ask.
From "A Separate Peace" by John Knowles
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
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
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
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
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
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 Marie Van Vorst
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
It forms one of the cleanliest and most beautiful shades, and when in blossom gives a rich prospect, and sends abroad a delicious fragrance.
From A New Guide for Emigrants to the West by John Mason Peck
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
