Clean-cut

adj

adj ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Having a neat, smart appearance

    "I fell down / To my bended knees, / Saying, "I dig farmers, / Don't shoot me, please!" / He cocked his rifle / And began to shout, / "You're that travelin' salesman / That I have heard about." / I said, "No! No! No! / I'm a doctor and it's true, / I'm a clean-cut kid / And I been to college, too.""

Adjective
  1. 1
    clear and distinct to the senses; easily perceptible wordnet
  2. 2
    neat and smart in appearance wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
categoricalcleanclearclear-cutcoherentcomely

Example

More examples

"She never lets you forget her clean-cut image."

Etymology

Apparently from the idea of being smoothly shaped and thus the opposite of “rough” or “coarse”.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.