The Collaborative International Dictionary
Clear \Clear\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Cleared; p. pr. & vb. n. Clearing.]
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To render bright, transparent, or undimmed; to free from clouds.
He sweeps the skies and clears the cloudy north.
--Dryden. To free from impurities; to clarify; to cleanse.
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To free from obscurity or ambiguity; to relive of perplexity; to make perspicuous.
Many knotty points there are Which all discuss, but few can clear.
--Prior. -
To render more quick or acute, as the understanding; to make perspicacious.
Our common prints would clear up their understandings.
--Addison -
To free from impediment or incumbrance, from defilement, or from anything injurious, useless, or offensive; as, to clear land of trees or brushwood, or from stones; to clear the sight or the voice; to clear one's self from debt; -- often used with of, off, away, or out.
Clear your mind of cant.
--Dr. Johnson.A statue lies hid in a block of marble; and the art of the statuary only clears away the superfluous matter.
--Addison. -
To free from the imputation of guilt; to justify, vindicate, or acquit; -- often used with from before the thing imputed.
I . . . am sure he will clear me from partiality.
--Dryden.How! wouldst thou clear rebellion?
--Addison. To leap or pass by, or over, without touching or failure; as, to clear a hedge; to clear a reef.
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To gain without deduction; to net.
The profit which she cleared on the cargo.
--Macaulay.To clear a ship at the customhouse, to exhibit the documents required by law, give bonds, or perform other acts requisite, and procure a permission to sail, and such papers as the law requires.
To clear a ship for action, or To clear for action (Naut.), to remove incumbrances from the decks, and prepare for an engagement.
To clear the land (Naut.), to gain such a distance from shore as to have sea room, and be out of danger from the land.
To clear hawse (Naut.), to disentangle the cables when twisted.
To clear up, to explain; to dispel, as doubts, cares or fears.
Usage examples of "to clear for action".
The hands came tumbling up from breakfast in a perfect babble of sound - the order to clear for action, the tricolour at the peak, the mountains of Spain ahead, the morning's capture, all combining to work them up into wild excitement.
The hands came tumbling up from breakfast in a perfect babble of sound the order to clear for action, the tricolour at the peak, the mountains of Spain ahead, the morning's capture, all combining to work them up into wild excitement.
Obviously some of the leading ships in the line with a lot of gear on deck when the time came to clear for action had hove them over the side out of the way.
Bush would have liked to clear for action, to open the ports and run out the guns.
All but one of you'd be quite welcome, except that we may have to clear for action at any moment.
If the ship ever had to clear for action in a hurry, the fine drapes and expensive French furniture would suffer badly.
If they ever had to clear for action some one would have to keep a close eye on those as everything was dragged below and the screens were torn down to strip Athena to her true identity, a fighting ship.
Below from the lower gundeck he could hear the squeal and rumble of trucks as the heavy twenty-four-pounders followed their example, and without looking up he said, 'Fifteen minutes to clear for action today, Mr.
We are likely to clear for action very soon, and she must be moved.
So we are pelting down to stop their capers - we shall be setting close-reefed topgallants presently - and quite soon we shall have to turn you out to clear for action.