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Glite Dictionary
🧹 To empty 💸 To take all money 🚪 To remove people
to clean out

to clean out

15 5.1
Make someone lose all their money or possessions
  • phrasal verb
  • /klin aʊt/
  • Informal
translation icon : vaciar
  • The con artist cleaned out her victims, leaving them with nothing after the scam.
  • cleaned out your account
  • cleaned out her savings
  • cleaned out your bank

It is cleaning out the bank accounts in a sense.

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Examples

  • We got into a heated poker game and I cleaned them out.

    The Addams Family (2019)

  • Five hundred would clean him out.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • The medical charge cleaned out my account.

    Fiction book (1992)

  • Vegas and the Super Bowl cleaned me out.

    Heat (1995)

  • Jessica cleaned out the bank account when she left.

    Koko (2021)

  • Didn't you just tell me yesterday that you cleaned out your bank account buying that awesome pair of shoes?

    Fiction book (2002)

  • I basically cleaned out my pitiful savings.

    Fiction book (1993)

  • He cleaned us out.

    Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)

  • Brunswick fraternal group fears it will have to disband after an embezzler cleans out the bank account.

    Blog text (22)

  • The boyfriend had caught a flight out of the country as soon as he'd cleaned out old Ethel's bank accounts and sold her brand-new Cadillac, forging her name on the pink slip.

    Fiction book (1993)

Synonyms

to wipe out
vsto clean out
189 4.2

Destroy something so nothing is left

refers to taking all money or possessions rather than destroying things
to clean
vsto clean out
  • Informal
88 8.4

To take all someone's money, often in gambling

leaves someone penniless through theft, spending, or loss
to despoil
vsto clean out
2 9.3

Steal valuable things and damage a place or person, often by force

causes total loss of money or goods without necessarily damaging property

Surface Forms

clean out infinitive
cleaned out past
cleaned out past participle
cleaning out present participle
cleans out third person singular

Morphology

clean + out

The verb 'clean' combined with the particle 'out' conveys a sense of removing or emptying something completely, so a learner who knows both words can infer a general meaning like 'to remove everything from someone or something'. However, the specific sense of depriving someone of money or possessions (often by theft or spending) is a metaphorical extension and not fully predictable from the parts, so it is only partially transparent to a B1 learner.

Etymology

Clean out also brings to mind emptying pockets, a safe, or a house so nothing is left, as when thieves take everything. So it means 'to deprive someone completely of money or possessions'.