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clean someone's clock

verb

Etymology

From clean (“to thrash, defeat”) and clock (“face”) as metonym for “guy”, “someone”.

Definitions

  1. To defeat someone decisively, in a physical fight or other competition or negotiation.

    • "When big business goes head to head with unions, the unions clean their clock," said one Republican aide in Congress.
    • Barack Obama cleaned her clock in the debates.
    • The heavily-tattooed Perez never recovered, getting nailed with flush head shots before a clean-up left hook cleaned his clock.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for clean someone's clock. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA