clear the neighborhood
clear the neighborhood verb: to become gravitationally dominant, such that there are no other bodies of comparable size within its orbit, other than its natural satellites or those otherwise under its gravitational influence.
Verb
clear the neighborhood (third-person singular simple present clears the neighborhood, present participle clearing the neighborhood, simple past and past participle cleared the neighborhood)
- To become gravitationally dominant, such that there are no other bodies of comparable size within its orbit, other than its natural satellites or those otherwise under its gravitational influence.
- Clearing the neighborhood is one of three necessary criteria for a celestial body to be considered a planet in the Solar System, according to the definition adopted in 2006 by the International Astronomical Union.
- Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see clear, the, neighborhood.
- He clears the neighborhood and drives toward the busier part of town, unaware he's doing fifty till he skids to meet a red light.2013 February 5, Dennis Mahoney, Fellow Mortals: A Novel, Macmillan, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 73
- Detroit officials could have built the housing projects before they cleared the neighborhood.2014 December 26, Karen R. Miller, Managing Inequality: Northern Racial Liberalism in Interwar Detroit, NYU Press, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 250
Examples of clear the neighborhood in a sentence
- Following an unsuccessful attempt by Iraqi soldiers to clear the neighborhood on January 8, American troops prepared a full-scale offensive to assist the Iraqis.2019 August 27, William E. Fork, “Haifa Street, Battle of (January 6–9, 2007)”, in Spencer C. Tucker, editor, Middle East Conflicts from...
- To visualize how the Lower Ninth looked before the city's formal campaign to clear the neighborhood, you had to understand that it no longer resembled an urban or even suburban environment.2021 March 30, Nathaniel Rich, Second Nature: Scenes from a World Remade, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, →OCLC:
Forms of clear the neighborhood
| third-person singular present | clears the neighborhood |
|---|---|
| present participle | clearing the neighborhood |
| past participle | cleared the neighborhood |
| past | cleared the neighborhood |
| alternative form | clear the neighbourhood |
Questions about clear the neighborhood
- What does clear the neighborhood mean?
- Clear the neighborhood means to become gravitationally dominant, such that there are no other bodies of comparable size within its orbit, other than its natural satellites or those otherwise under its gravitational influence.
- How do you use clear the neighborhood in a sentence?
- Following an unsuccessful attempt by Iraqi soldiers to clear the neighborhood on January 8, American troops prepared a full-scale offensive to assist the Iraqis.
- What part of speech is clear the neighborhood?
- Clear the neighborhood is a verb.
- What is the past tense of clear the neighborhood?
- The past tense of clear the neighborhood is cleared the neighborhood.
Words near clear the neighborhood in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: clear the neighborhood (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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Cite this entry: “clear the neighborhood.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/clear_the_neighborhood. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.