clean

Dictionary of American Words And Phrases by John Russell Bartlett.

adv. (AngSax. clæne.) Quite; perfectly; fully; completely. This sense is now little used.--Johnson. In the United States it is common among the illiterate, but rarely seen in composition.


Spenser labored to restore such good and natural English words as have been a long time out of use, and almost cleane disherited.

Obs. on Spenser's Fairy Queen, by E. K.

The people passed clean over Jordan.

Joshua, iii. 17.

Let's hew his limbs till they be clean consum'd.

Shakspeare, Titus And.

Since the prelates were made lords and nobles, there is no work done. They hawk, they hunt, they dice, they pastime with gallant gentlemen. And by their lording and loitering, preaching and ploughing is clean gone.

Bp. Latimer's Sermon of the Plough.

He gave him a kick that sent him clean over the fence, into the Deacon's potato-patch.

Maj. Downing's Letters, p. 23.

Dictionary of American Words And Phrases by John Russell Bartlett.

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