Word.ws English Dictionary

clean one's plate

clean one's plate verb: to finish all of the food served to one, without leaving leftovers.

Verb

clean one's plate (third-person singular simple present cleans one's plate, present participle cleaning one's plate, simple past and past participle cleaned one's plate)

  1. To finish all of the food served to one, without leaving leftovers.

Forms of clean one's plate

third-person singular presentcleans one's plate
present participlecleaning one's plate
past participlecleaned one's plate
pastcleaned one's plate

Questions about clean one's plate

What does clean one's plate mean?
Clean one's plate means to finish all of the food served to one, without leaving leftovers.
What part of speech is clean one's plate?
Clean one's plate is a verb.
What is the past tense of clean one's plate?
The past tense of clean one's plate is cleaned one's plate.

Words near clean one's plate in the dictionary

  1. clean meat
  2. clean meats
  3. Clean Monday
  4. clean money
  5. clean off
  6. clean one's plate
  7. clean out
  8. clean potato
  9. clean power
  10. clean price
  11. clean prices

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: clean one's plate (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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