Cleaner

How to spell cleaner

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce cleaner

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cleaner mean?

1. nounA person whose job is to clean, or a substance or device used for cleaning.
2. adjectiveMore free from dirt or impurities; the comparative form of clean.

Cleaner in a sentence

• noun

  The office cleaner arrives before anyone else each morning.

• adjective

  The kitchen looked far cleaner after a full afternoon of scrubbing.

• noun

  She sprayed an oven cleaner on the burnt tray and left it to soak.

• adjective

  Electric trains are cleaner than diesel ones for the city air.

Where does cleaner come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the native Old English adjective 'claene', meaning 'pure', 'clear', or 'free from dirt', which belonged to the wider Germanic family of words for brightness and purity. By adding the agent suffix '-er', English formed a noun for a person or thing that makes something clean, a pattern it uses freely for words like 'baker' and 'teacher'. The same '-er' ending also serves as the comparative marker, so 'cleaner' doubles as the comparative form of the adjective 'clean', meaning 'more clean'. The spelling keeps the silent-looking 'ea' that represents the long vowel, a hangover from older English spelling habits that can trip writers expecting 'ee'. Because both the noun and the comparative are built so transparently from a familiar everyday root, the word has stayed remarkably stable in form for centuries.

How the word is built

• clean (free from dirt)
• -er (agent suffix / comparative suffix)