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clean as a whistle
Idioms and Phrases
Completely, entirely, thoroughly, as in He chopped off the branch, clean as a whistle . The allusion in this simile is unclear. It may have been a replacement for the 18th-century clear as a whistle , which alluded to the pure, clean sound of a whistle (it has few overtones). However, it was adopted to describe something thoroughly done. [Early 1800s]Example Sentences
After escaping a pair of masked assailants, he brings the police around; the sauna, you will have guessed, is clean as a whistle.
When I come to, I’m in the recovery room, head still cloudy, soul unsettled but clean as a whistle.
"He’s got a crack in his lower leg that they fixed and operated on. It went clean as a whistle, really good. It was as good as it could humanly be as far as the prognosis of things," Fisher said, via Yahoo Sports.
I searched online how best to get that area clean as a whistle with no viable results.
“Clean as a whistle, sharp as a tack.”
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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.
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