cleanup on aisle five
- idiom
- US
:
limpieza en el pasillo cinco
- After the glass jar broke, the loudspeaker called for a cleanup on aisle five.
Examples
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Whenever something spilled in the supermarket, you'd hear someone request a cleanup on aisle five.
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He joked about his messy desk, saying it looked like he needed a cleanup on aisle five.
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There's a cleanup on aisle five!
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Did you hear about the cleanup on aisle five?
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After the glass jar broke, the loudspeaker called for a cleanup on aisle five.
-
Whenever something spilled in the supermarket, you'd hear someone request a cleanup on aisle five.
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There's a cleanup on aisle five! Please be careful while walking by!
Surface Forms
Morphology
This phrase is a literal composition: 'cleanup' (a cleaning activity) combined with the locative phrase 'on aisle five' clearly indicates where cleaning is needed. A B1 learner who knows the constituent words will readily infer that the announcement calls attention to a mess at aisle five, so the meaning is directly derivable from the parts.
Etymology
Cleanup on aisle five comes from supermarket announcements. When someone spilled something, the store would call for a cleanup at a named place, like aisle five, to bring a cleaner quickly, so people now use it to say 'there is a mess' or jokingly to tell someone to tidy up.
