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clean bill of health
noun
- a certificate of health attesting the lack of a contagious disease, as on a ship.
- an assurance, as by a doctor, that one is in good health.
- Also clean bill. an assurance, especially an official verdict by a committee, that a group or an individual has proved, under investigation, to be morally sound, fit for office, etc.
clean bill of health
- To “get a clean bill of health” is to be told by some authoritative source, generally a doctor, that one is perfectly healthy. The phrase is sometimes used figuratively to indicate that a person or organization has been found free of any sort of irregularity: “After looking into her financial background, the Senate gave the nominee a clean bill of health.”
Word History and Origins
Origin of clean bill of health1
Idioms and Phrases
A report confirming the absence of fault or guilt in a person or thing, as in Jeff checked every component and gave the computer a clean bill of health , or He had a foolproof alibi so the police had to give him a clean bill of health . This term comes from a 17th-century practice of requiring ships to produce a medical document ( bill ) attesting to the absence of infectious disease on board before landing.Example Sentences
But whether USC will have a clean bill of health by then remains to be seen.
She steadily improved and within a year got a clean bill of health.
"We haven't given Israel a clean bill of health - Israel's performance on aid has not been good enough."
But she said doctors can’t provide patients with “an everything looks good’ or a clean bill of health off of an ultrasound at 10 weeks.”
Wagner said these early ultrasounds can’t provide the assurance patients are looking for because “you can’t give somebody an ‘everything looks good’ or a clean bill of health off of an ultrasound at 10 weeks.”
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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