clean up
"clean-up" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“clean up” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 8
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To make an area or a thing clean; to pick up a mess; to tidy.
Corpus desk
Index EN-clean-up · clean up · English
clean up · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 8 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "C" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | clean up |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 8 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “clean up” in English
Rare enough to double-check
clean up is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 5 senses are on record.
No generated misspelling entries exist for clean up in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is clean up, spelled C-L-E-A-N- -U-P.
Definition
- 1To make an area or a thing clean; to pick up a mess; to tidy.
- 2To become clean, handsome, smart in appearance, e.g. for a special occasion, especially when it is out of character to be seen as such.
- 3To make something less corrupt or unseemly.
- 4To make a large profit; to win by a large margin, or to win a large amount, especially in gambling. Also clean house.
- 5To intervene in a fight between two players at low health and easily kill both of them or the winner.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how clean up appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Clean up your room.
Rhos station had been cleaned up for the occasion, and its single platform was gay with flags.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.