Clean sweep means winning everything, often used in awards ceremonies or political victories. In nautical terms, it means defeating an enemy or waves washing over the deck. The phrase comes from an old proverb meaning a fresh start. It has been used in entertainment, the arts, and government.
In its modern usage, a clean sweep more often than not means winning it all. The phrase could be used to describe an awards ceremony where one person wins in every category. It is also commonly used to describe political victories, especially those in which a candidate runs in multiple districts or states and wins a majority of votes in each area.
As a phrase used by sailors, a clean sweep means to defeat an enemy. In the event of such a victory, sailors once hung a broom from the highest point of the ship to indicate to others that they had been victorious. Even in nautical terms, sailors might describe a clean sweep as a case where waves washed over the deck of the boat, drenching whatever was left and carrying or displacing whatever was not tied down with it.
The phrase came into modern usage from an old proverb. That
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, “a new broom sweeps away” meant that everything had changed, usually meant that something bad had been made to disappear. While that proverb is still used in modern English, it’s not as common as a clean sweep.
While in its modern usage it is more often used to refer to a complete victory, it is still sometimes used in the older sense of the original proverb. It can be used to mean a fresh start, where a person gives up old habits, possessions, or relationships to make a fresh start. The proverb dates back to the 19th century, and an even older, general phrase dates back to the 16th century. General sweep had much the same connotation and usage as the clean sweep proverb and idiom.
The phrase probably developed at a time when brooms were made at home or by a local craftsman. Made of dried grasses or twigs tied together, making or buying a new broom was not often due to the labor involved. A broom was used until it was worn out, and when a new broom was made, it made a clean sweep of the dust and dirt that had built up once the old broom had become too worn to be effective.
As with many old phrases, a clean sweep has found its way into entertainment, the arts, and even government. The phrase lent itself to the title of a TV show and a Hardy Boys novel. It is also the name of a type of Microsoft computer software.
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