Word.ws English Dictionary

clean up one's act

clean up one's act verb: to reform; to improve one's habits.

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To reform; to improve one's habits.
    • Someday I'm going to clean up my act and start researching more carefully.

Forms of clean up one's act

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

Questions about clean up one's act

What does clean up one's act mean?
Clean up one's act means to reform; to improve one's habits.
What part of speech is clean up one's act?
Clean up one's act is a verb.
What is the past tense of clean up one's act?
The past tense of clean up one's act is cleaned up one's act.

Words near clean up one's act in the dictionary

  1. clean sweeps
  2. clean teen
  3. clean teens
  4. clean up
  5. clean up after
  6. clean up one's act
  7. clean up one's plate
  8. clean URL
  9. clean URLs
  10. clean-cut
  11. clean-handed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: clean up one's act (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-clean up one's act.ogg.

Cite this entry: “clean up one's act.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/clean_up_one%27s_act. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.