housecleaning

1. 1.

   (figurative) the act of reforming by the removal of unwanted personnel or practices or conditions

   “more housecleaning is in store at other accounting firms”

   “many employees were discharged in a general housecleaning by the new owners”

   Broaderreform

   trope

2. 2.

   the act of cleaning the rooms and furnishings of a house

   “efficient housecleaning should proceed one room at a time”

   Broadercleaning

Other forms of housecleaning

plural

housecleanings·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about housecleaning

What does housecleaning mean?

housecleaning means "(figurative) the act of reforming by the removal of unwanted personnel or practices or conditions". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in housecleaning?

housecleaning has 3 syllables: house-clea-ning. The stress falls on "house". In IPA it is /ˈhaʊsˌklinɪŋ/.

Is housecleaning a common word?

housecleaning is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with housecleaning?

1 word rhymes with housecleaning. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.