Word.ws English Dictionary

coming clean

coming clean is the present participle and gerund 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 coming clean

What is coming clean the present participle and gerund of?
Coming clean is the present participle and gerund of come clean.

Words near coming clean in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: coming 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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