Clean / clean up

Question

Do we have to say there is a meaning difference between them, clean and clean up? Or they are the same because they are interchangeable but there must be a reason for using 'up' meaning 'completely'. Well...I think it all depends on what aspect we see, so we can say that the meaning is the same or not in a way. What do you native English speakers think? Thank you.

AlpheccaStars · Accepted Answer

There is a difference.

Let's clean up after dinner.

It means to wash and dry the dishes, wipe the table, sweep the floor, etc.
That is to do all the cleaning kinds of things.

Let's clean after dinner.

This is not natural because "clean" needs an object: Let's clean the floor. Let's wash the dishes.

Mother to son:
Clean up your room. Then you can play computer games.

It means to put away all the toys, make up the bed, and all the other chores that mom wants him to do.

RandomGuy · Answer

The phrasal verb has a couple of other distinct uses.

to rid of undesirable persons or features: They cleaned up the local bars.
to make a large profit, often in a short period of time: cleaned up during the bull market.

(taken from dictionaries)

Anonymous · Answer

I believe that alphecca stars post is somewhat wrong

I am not going to exhaust the list, there's a few reasons it can be clean - up vs clean

Saying simply:

Clean, clean up, clean off, wipe down, rinse off, dry out

is the most vague way to say clean, it can mean so many things it hard to believe, this goes for clean up, and clean off to. If you dont know when to use one of the 3 just use a more specific verb, such as rinse off, wipe down, dust, dry.

Examples:

Help me clean off the plates
This means to actually wash them, and have them ready for use again

I have to wash the plates
The word wash here means to completely wash, and have the plates set up for use again. It does not matter whether you dry them by hand or let them sit. It is still washing them

Help me clean up the table
You are going to reorganize the table, possibly you may even wipe it down

Help me clean the table
if i heard this I would naturally think this means to wipe the table down with water/ cleaning solution.

Help me clean off the table
This could means to wipe crumbs off of it, it could mean to completely remove any unnecessary objects, it can even mean to just remove all items from the table. Generally though, it will mean this clean up + wipeing off crumbs.

There is many ways to say these types of things in English, and sometimes certain things will just sound weird to native English speakers. As you can see here these can all mean relatively the same thing.

Clean / clean up

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