Word.ws English Dictionary

cleaning someone's clock

cleaning someone's clock is the present participle and gerund of clean someone's clock.

Meaning of clean someone's clock

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To defeat someone decisively, in a physical fight or other competition or negotiation.
    • "When big business goes head to head with unions, the unions clean their clock," said one Republican aide in Congress.1997 November 12, Richard W. Stevenson, “Executives Say Trade Bill Defeat Will Hurt Economy”, in New York Times, retrieved 07 Oct 2008

Questions about cleaning someone's clock

What is cleaning someone's clock the present participle and gerund of?
Cleaning someone's clock is the present participle and gerund of clean someone's clock.

Words near cleaning someone's clock in the dictionary

  1. cleaning rods
  2. cleaning shoe
  3. cleaning shoes
  4. cleaning sieve
  5. cleaning sieves
  6. cleaning someone's clock
  7. cleaning up
  8. cleaning up after
  9. cleaning up one's act
  10. cleaning up one's plate
  11. cleaning woman

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cleaning someone's clock (page history and authors); clean someone's clock (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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