make a clean breast of

1. 1.

   admit or acknowledge a wrongdoing or error

   “the writer of the anonymous letter owned up after they identified his handwriting”

   Synonymsown upfess up

   Broaderconcede

Questions about make a clean breast of

What does make a clean breast of mean?

make a clean breast of means "admit or acknowledge a wrongdoing or error".

What is another word for make a clean breast of?

Close synonyms include own up, fess up. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is make a clean breast of a common word?

make a clean breast of is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.