0 past simple and past participle of clear --
1 to remove or get rid of whatever is blocking or filling something, or to stop being blocked or full: --
I never leave work until I've cleared my in-tray (= have finished the work that needs to be done).
Paul helped his elderly neighbour by clearing her path of snow/clearing snow from her path.
Shops are currently holding sales to clear their summer stock (= get rid of goods by selling them cheaply).
If you press this key, the computer screen will clear (= the text and pictures will be removed from it).
After my aunt died, we arranged for her house to be cleared (= for the furniture to be removed from it).
2 to prove that someone is not guilty of something that they were accused of: --
3 to give official permission for something: --
Before you can enter the country, you have to clear customs.
I don't know if I can get the car tonight - I'll have to clear it with Mum.
Ladies and gentlemen, air-traffic control has now cleared the plane for take-off.
Despite local opposition, the plans for the new supermarket have been cleared by the council.
4 to become or make something pure or easy to see through: --
The fog is expected to have cleared (away) (= gone) by midday.
After the thunderstorm, the sky cleared (= stopped being cloudy).
Your skin would clear (= become free of spots) if you had a healthier diet.
The children enjoyed stirring the mud at the bottom of the pond, then watching the water slowly clear again.
5 to make your mind free from confusion so that you can think quickly and well: --
Once open-access forests are cleared by poor early settlers, cleared land becomes their de-facto private property.
This response is observed even though newly cleared fields are typically in places where risks of erosion and other forms of land degradation are acute.
Of course, the complexity enveloping a pattern in each specific setting has to be partially cleared so as to get at its basic mechanism.
The rubble of human lives is somehow deemed to have been cleared and healed by the ever-changing, ever-grander jumble of concrete, glass and steel.
Humans cleared forests and drained swamps but did little else.
A street was built and huge amounts of 'rubble' on the site itself were cleared.
I was shown two places where forest had been cleared, and the tyretracks of large lorries that led away from these sites.
Another process that affects the higher desiccation rate of cleared areas is the diurnal cycle of temperature and wind.
