clean house

Wipe out corruption or inefficiency, as in It's time the Republican Party cleaned house . This usage is most often applied to an organization. [ Slang ; c. 1900]
Punish, give a beating, as in Whenever he was drunk he threatened to clean house on one and all . [ Slang ; c. 1900]

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Example Sentences

And Mitt Romney is vowing to “clean house” at the agency as the political headaches mount for the Obama administration.

Bartz joined Yahoo in January 2009 and was supposed to clean house and engineer a turnaround for the ailing Internet giant.

History shows that voter anger about corruption leads us to clean House.

Asked how she finds the time to be both homemaker and gangster, she replied, "A clean house is a sign of a broken computer!"

Robert Pozen on how the banks can clean house—and get the feds off their backs.

The clean house in the midst of a dirty city may be the match to start a fire of cleansing.

Do you believe that girls should like to work at home, to cook and clean house and mind the baby?

In March Mrs. Northrup began to clean house and took a bad cold, and a month later was buried.

Colour is not Rembrandtesque, usually, in a clean house; but is presently obtainable of that quality in a dirty one.

The next place was a nice clean house, where we restored ourselves again.

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