Crossword clues for cleanness
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Cleanness \Clean"ness\, n. [AS. cl?nnes. See Clean.]
The state or quality of being clean.
Purity of life or language; freedom from licentious courses.
--Chaucer.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Old English clænnes "(moral) cleanness, purity, chastity;" see clean (adj.) + -ness. Meaning "absence of dirt or filth" is late 14c.
Wiktionary
n. moral purity; innocence.
WordNet
n. the state of being clean; without dirt or other impurities [ant: dirtiness]
without moral defects
Wikipedia
Cleanness ( Middle English: Clannesse) is a Middle English alliterative poem written in the late 14th century. Its unknown author, designated the Pearl poet or Gawain poet, also appears, on the basis of dialect and stylistic evidence, to be the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Patience, and may have composed St. Erkenwald.
The poem is found solely in the Pearl manuscript, Cotton Nero A x. That manuscript also contains Pearl, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. None of the poems has a title or divisions of chapters, but the breaks are marked by large initial letters of blue, and there are twelve illustrations (or illuminations) contained within the manuscript, depicting scenes from the four poems. Each of these poems is entirely unique to this one manuscript. Cleanness (which is an editorial title) is also known by the editorial title Purity.
The manuscript, Cotton Nero A.x is in the British Museum. The first published edition was in Early English Alliterative Poems in the West Midland Dialect of the fourteenth century, printed by the Early English Text Society.
Cleanness is a description of the virtues of cleanliness of body and the delights of married love. It takes three subjects from the Bible as its illustrations: the Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the fall of Belshazzar. Each of these is described powerfully, and the poetry is among the finest in Middle English. In each case, the poet warns his readers about the dangers of defilement and, at the same time, the joys of purity.
Usage examples of "cleanness".
Mary is handed over by her parents to the care of the High Priest at the Temple, she finds provided for her as companions the five maidens, Meditation, Contrition, Compassion, Cleanness and Fruition, while near by await her seven teachers, Discretion, Devotion, Dilection, Deliberation, Declaration, Determination and Divination, a goodly company of Doctors indeed.
After I had inspected her two rooms and her little kitchen, and had admired the cleanness which shone all around, Barberine asked me if I would like to see their small garden.
And shame it is, if that a priest take keep, To see a shitten shepherd and clean sheep: Well ought a priest ensample for to give, By his own cleanness, how his sheep should live.
The cleanness and the fasting of us freres Maketh that Christ accepteth our prayeres.
The old priests, who conducted the service of the Goddess, had received the daughter of Rameses with respect, and undertook to restore her to cleanness by degrees with the help of the water from the mountain-stream which watered the palm-grove of the Amalekites, of incense-burning, of pious sentences, and of a hundred other ceremonies.
Like the rest of the houses on the street, it was old but washed to pristine cleanness, and a pot of pink geraniums bloomed on the doorstep.
It affected his palate in a new way - with the purity and cleanness of water was combined the exhilaration of a sparkling wine, raising his spirits - but somehow the intoxication brought out his better nature, and not his lower.
As he passed up on to the roof and I followed him, the comparative cleanness of the air was most refreshing after the varied fumes of the staircase.