Wiktionary
vb. 1 (context transitive English) To remove something by, or as if by, sweeping. 2 (context idiomatic transitive English) To overwhelm someone emotionally; sweep someone off their feet. 3 (context idiomatic transitive English) to completely destroy, to annihilate
WordNet
Usage examples of "sweep away".
It was a desperate cry, its sound of laughter and of release confessing all the agony he wanted to sweep away.
If she strove to sweep away that growing haze, her efforts worked in exactly the opposite fashion —.
Arbanus' intent was obvious - to employ his footmen to sweep away the infantry of Conan, and open the way for an overpowering charge of his heavy cavalry.
You are the most honored of women, and will sit at my feet as I sweep away the old order and establish the new.
Well, then, attend to me, and you will see how, in the opening and shutting of an eye, I sweep away all your difficulties, and supply all those deficiencies which you say check and discourage you from bringing before the world the story of your famous Don Quixote, the light and mirror of all knight-errantry.
Dried for a day on Dennis' back as he tramped in the sun, the rags became a coarse cloth with enough embedded silica to sweep away all hints of rust.
Yet just as he can work only by degrees, we can't sweep away evil in a moment.
They worked with great care, using their bare hands to sweep away the sand.
But the assassination of Apollinaris dooms the Imperial system: after eighteen centuries of Caesars, there is an intense public yearning to sweep away the lazy and luxury-loving aristocracy and return to the ancient republican governmental form that Augustus abolished.
If she strove to sweep away that growing haze, her efforts worked in exactly the opposite fashion it was thickening.
Arbanus intent was obvious - to employ his footmen to sweep away the infantry of Conan, and open the way for an overpowering charge of his heavy cavalry.
But they do not amount to revolutionizing the practice of magic, nor do they sweep away all we have done here for hundreds of years.
Yet just as he can work only by degrees, we cant sweep away evil in a moment.
Its overrunning by nonwhites might trigger a world revolution that could sweep away civilization.