Word.ws English Dictionary

came clean

came clean is the simple past of come clean.

Meaning of come clean

Verb

come clean (third-person singular simple present comes clean, present participle coming clean, simple past came clean, past participle come clean)

  1. (idiomatic) To confess; admit the truth.
    • "You better come clean, Swan, and tell the whole thing. What was it? Don't talk in circles."1921, B. M. Bower, chapter 6, in Sawtooth Ranch
    Synonyms:
    fess up, own up

Questions about came clean

What is came clean the simple past of?
Came clean is the simple past of come clean.

Words near came clean in the dictionary

  1. came back to haunt
  2. came before
  3. came between
  4. came by
  5. came calling
  6. came clean
  7. came down
  8. came down cats and dogs
  9. came down in stair rods
  10. came down on
  11. came down to

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: came clean (page history and authors); come clean (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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