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say it: HOWS-klee-ning
housecleaning is a noun meaning "(figurative) the act of reforming by the removal of unwanted personnel or practices or conditions". It is pronounced /ˈhaʊsˌklinɪŋ/ — HOWS-klee-ning. It carries 2 recorded senses.
(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”
trope
the act of cleaning the rooms and furnishings of a house
“efficient housecleaning should proceed one room at a time”
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.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for housecleaning come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.