CLEANING (UP) Synonyms: 139 Similar and Opposite Words

cleaning (up)

verb

present participle of clean (up)

as in tidying (up)

to make a place neat and orderly by removing extraneous stuff you're expected to clean up after you use the workroom

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as in censoring

to remove objectionable parts from cleaned up the rock star's interview before publishing it in the newspaper

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as in eradicating

to destroy all traces of hurriedly cleaned up the mess that they had created in the kitchen

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Recent Examples of Synonyms for cleaning (up)

Verb

But the tireless churn of his storytelling, picking up and depositing little clues of what came before, is the mark of an auteur who has barely scratched the surface of his prowess.

— Matthew Ritchie, Pitchfork, 15 Oct. 2026
Most of the wild weather starts tonight, with wind speeds picking up and temperatures ticking up during the overnight hours behind a warm front and warm air advection.

— Ron Smiley, CBS News, 15 Oct. 2026

Definition of picking up

Verb

Equal-time rule doesn’t apply, group says The equal-time rule prohibits broadcast stations from censoring or rejecting political ads paid for and sponsored by legally qualified candidates.

— ArsTechnica, ArsTechnica, 29 Sep. 2026
Earlier in the week, Kraft allegedly led a pressure campaign to force the Seattle rapper off Ed Sheeran’s The Loop Tour, igniting a firestorm of backlash from artists and fans accusing Kraft of censoring Macklemore’s free speech.

— Charisma Madarang, Rolling Stone, 16 Sep. 2026

Definition of censoring

Verb

The Beijing propaganda machine has been busy eradicating the truth about the Tiananmen Square Massacre for nearly forty years.

— Literary Hub, Literary Hub, 21 Oct. 2026
But somehow, in the midst of all this frat-boy revelry, Ilya is able to outline his vision for the future, one in which AI will have solved numerous human problems, including eradicating not only cancer but also loneliness and unhappiness.

— Stephanie Zacharek, Time, 7 Oct. 2026

Definition of eradicating

Verb

Anthropic also observed models using URL-shortening services to work around limits designed to restrict certain web requests.

— Kurt Knutsson, FOXNews.com, 19 Oct. 2026
As an investor at Point72, the hedge fund of billionaire Steve Cohen, Shaffer watched Wall Street turn private fund shares into digital tokens without shortening investors’ waits to cash out.

— Camila Grigera Naón, Fortune, 15 Oct. 2026

Definition of shortening

Verb

Cincinnati kept pouring it on after erasing the 13-0 deficit.

— ABC News, ABC News, 25 Oct. 2026
In the bottom of the sixth, Sal Frelick led off the inning with a lefty-on-lefty solo homer off Ian Seymour in a nine-pitch at-bat, completely erasing the deficit.

— Ryan Morik OutKick, FOXNews.com, 25 Oct. 2026

Definition of erasing

Verb

Shares slumped 16% for a third straight session of losses, wiping out $400 billion in market cap on Monday alone.

— Gail Krishnan, CNBC, 23 June 2026
The prospect of even a mini-Dust Bowl is alarming as the original disaster during the Great Depression sent dust clouds across rural America, wiping out entire communities and triggering mass migration to other parts of the country.

— Jason Ma, Fortune, 21 June 2026

Definition of wiping out

Verb

For a few minutes at each end of that window, the moon’s edge will appear to align with that of the sun, blotting out the star’s fierce light and revealing the wispy corona off to one side.

— Meghan Bartels, Scientific American, 6 Apr. 2026
From up in the space shuttle, in 1983, astronaut Sally Ride could see the pollution blotting out her Los Angeles hometown.

— Patt Morrison, Los Angeles Times, 26 Mar. 2026

Definition of blotting out

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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“Cleaning (up).” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/cleaning%20%28up%29. Accessed 28 Oct. 2026.

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Synonyms of cleaning (up)

verb

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