make a clean breast
Verb
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Verb
- (intransitive, idiomatic) to be honest about something; to confess; often used with of.
- 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde
- "It is well, then that we should be frank," said the other. "We both think more than we have said; let us make a clean breast. This masked figure that you saw, did you recognise it?"
- 1915, John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps
- Then suddenly I thought of another probability. Supposing I went out now and called in the police, or went to bed and let Paddock find the body and call them in the morning. What kind of a story was I to tell about Scudder? I had lied to Paddock about him, and the whole thing looked desperately fishy. If I made a clean breast of it and told the police everything he had told me, they would simply laugh at me.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea Chapter 43 - "Master," he said that day to me, "this must come to an end. I must make a clean breast of it. This Nemo is leaving land and going up to the north. But I declare to you that I have had enough of the South Pole, and I will not follow him to the North."
- 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.004