Wiktionary
n. (context chiefly politics English) A complete or overwhelming victory, especially one in which all or almost all possible electoral contests are won.
Wikipedia
Clean sweep may refer to:
- Clean Sweep, an American television series
- clean sweep (naval), a naval expression meaning a successful mission
- Clean-Sweep, a fictional character in the G.I. Joe universe
- Clean Sweep (The Hardy Boys), a Hardy Boys novel
- Operation Clean Sweep, a 2004 coalition counterinsurgency operation in Iraq
- Quarterdeck CleanSweep, a software utility for Microsoft Windows used to uninstall applications
- Clean sweep (sport) ( nl), a sports term. Winning all matches, or as a nation placing 1, 2 and 3 on the podium.
A "clean sweep" for a naval vessel refers to having "swept the enemy from the seas," a completely successful mission. It is traditionally indicated by hanging a broom from a mast or lashing it to the periscope of a submarine.
Usage examples of "clean sweep".
All the wasters and the ignorant I hold in contempt, and my clone sibling so despises, could be elevated in one clean sweep, made a gift of the intelligence they so profoundly lack.
Wynand could not understand for a long time why the place gave him an impression of luxury, until he saw that one did not notice the furniture at all: only a clean sweep of space and the luxury of an austerity that had not been simple to achieve.
Men expected that he would appease his father's ghost by sending Queen Asa into the howe with him, and make a clean sweep by leaving the child Halvdan, his half-brother, out in the forest for the wolves.
With the death throes of the Arab uprising Whitehall made a clean sweep of their government in the mandate.
It was all that he needed to make this patrol a clean sweep, so that he could fly a broom from his masthead when he sailed into Table Bay again.
From around them came isolated pops and bursts of gunfire, but for all practical purposes, Operation Clean Sweep was also over.