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 the land".
In time long past, there might have been trees, but more than a hundred years ago, if there had been any, they had fallen to the ax to clear the land for fields.
The garden had been cleared away and the pig-sties were finished, but there was still the most arduous portion of the work to commence, which was the felling of the trees to clear the land for the growing of corn.