clear away

verb clears away · clearing away · cleared away

1. transitive To tidy up, to remove mess or obstacles from a place to make it neat. Further along the gallery was the huge skeleton barrel of a brontosaurus. My museum hypothesis was confirmed. Going toward the side of the gallery I found what appeared to be sloping shelves, and clearing away the thick dust, I found the old familiar glass cases of our own time. But these must have
2. intransitive To leave, disappear. The showers should clear away tomorrow.
3. figuratively, transitive To dispose of, to get rid of, to remove. A state ideology, mixing nationalism, and basic Marxist economics, going under the name "Juche", was constructed, and Kim Il-sung effectively silenced, disposed of and cleared away any opposition, isolating the country and exercising an iron grip on the military, the state media and the government a
4. transitive To prepare some object for use by removing obstacles, untying or unfastening it. The schooner was run into the wind, and while the hands were clearing away the stern boat, Queequeg, stripped to the waist, darted from the side with a long living arc of a leap.