Can anyone explain the origin of “cleaning someone’s clock” as a synonym for “beating someone or something very easily”?
or
(Same Safire article, different sources)
The article gives no word on where the phrase started out:
If you read the progression of the finding of these cites about the phrase over at the American Dialect Society, you’ll see that not only do they quite often relate to sports, but railroads. And the railroad connotation implies something about “wiping” the face of a clockface clean. As in a gauge. Just a suggestion.
Just a WAG here, but maybe In Them Olden Days, cleaning a clock (as opposed to simply dusting or wiping it) required more or less complete dissassembly and re-assembly? So that “cleaning <X>'s clock” was a metaphor for being in complete control?
I asked the same question.
Actually, given the way the sentence is constructed I would hazard a guess that actual thistles were used to clean clocks. Likely he was referring to the ends of brushes (what we call bristles nowadays - possibly a change in word usage: Brush+Thistle=bristle?) that were used to clean the dirt and soot off clocks.
And, of course, “clean the clocks”… “Times boys”… get it?
I think it’s a clever phrase that worked both ways back then, which is why it stuck in the publics imagination.
I took it to mean more a thorough beating, not so much done easily, but done completely over time, being certain no step is left out?
You’d be wrong. The sentence was only talking about baseball at the local level. The Thistles were one of about 20 teams, and they were the best, and had just beaten the Trenton Times team, who were doing poorly. And the public didn’t really use this phrase much before the 1950’s and later, as witnessed by the OED only having it from 1959 until recently, when electronic databases became available. But there are only perhaps 5 cites between 1908 and 1959. Not enough to call this a phrase that the public used frequently.
When you asked that question, in February of this year(2006), I gave you the best information we had available at that time. The OED only cited it from 1959, I found a 1946 cite, and I posted at the American Dialect Society about this, hoping the experts there could find better. And they did, and Safire, as usual, picked up on their research.
The phrase “fix someone’s clock” which meant exactly the same thing as “clean one’s clock” is found in 1899, although Evan Morris found it from 1908(O. Henry).
So, what did it refer to originally? Stay tuned. Etymology is constanty being updated.
I always took it to mean a sort of double metaphor. “Clock” would be referring to clockwork – the complex assortment of gears and springs and cogs and such – that make the clock work, which itself would be a metaphor for one’s brain. It could be considered then that punching someone in the head to be the equivalent of knocking it (the clock) about to dislodge the dust and debris that may have collected inside of it. Thus, “cleaning” someone’s “clock” is to punch someone in the head, ostensibly shaking the dust off their “clockwork.”
I know I’ve heard the expression clean your plow before, I wonder what’s the connection
This has to be it. It’s the same basic idea as “took them apart,” “dismantled the defense,” etc…
I never figured it out myself. The only time I got my clock cleaned was when I took my old Sligh chiming clock to a shop and paid to have it cleaned.
Patty O’Furniture’s “waxed his glasses” leaves me with a very different picture. Back when I found it amusing to go to breast bars, I found that some of the dancers like to take off a fella’s glasses and rub them across their tender parts. I never quite understood that prank. Her whole show is visual, and she wants to blur the vision of a viewer.
By the way, if you go into a bazongas bar wearing a fedora, I guarantee at least one dancer will want to wear it onstage, and maybe try to stuff both her boobs into it.
What kind of gentleman are you… Take your hat off when entering an indoor establishment! Especially a “Gentlemen’s Club”! 
I’ve always interpreted it the same way, probably because most of the times I’ve heard it used its been about a fight, not a sporting match. It’s similar to “rang his bell”.
This weren’t no “gentlemen’s club.” It was a seedy joint, which I guess is a pun. Our meager local organized crime guys always had somebody in attendance, and the town’s most prosperous pimp often came in with some of his wares.
Due to the friendly dancers, I might have hung my hat on my lap. If a lad laid anything down on the bar in this dive, he might leave without it. As it was, I had to trade a generous tip for the return of my newly-perfumed fedora.
I’ll third this interpretation.
Roget’s New Millennium Thesaurus gives “clock” and “dial” as synonyms for “face.”