As in getting smashed, broken, heeled, beat up etc. I just noticed samclem use this phrase, and started to parse it. Wouldn’t getting your clock cleaned make it run smoother? Is that the original meaning? To take one to task so their mental facilities start clicking?
I always understood the idea to be that cleaning a clock would require taking it completely apart.
Here’s what the folks at Phrase Finder have to say:
Two (speculative) ideas: the threat to hit someone in the face, since clockfaces have long been associated with human faces. Second, threatening a blow so violent it would blow the dust off the gears and inner mechanism of a clock, a veiled reference to shaking up the brain enough to scramble your senses. Pure guesswork.
i misread the thread title and expected a totally different subject.
It’s a WWII era phrase. I just found a cite from 1946.
Evan Morris gives a pretty good read on the term, although he wasn’t aware of my finding a cite which predated the 1959 one from RHDAS.
Why would you want your dock cleaned? Have too many overexicted seamen made it slippery?
I am glad you brought this up silenus. In High School I had an Asst. Principal leave the back of the auditorium to take a seat behind me, lean forward and say in a hushed voice “Keep it up and I’m gonna clean your clock!”
Without another word, he got up and returned to his post.
I sat in a somewhat shocked silence because:
Firstly, to this day I have no idea of what I could possibly have done to get this reaction (I got into A LOT of trouble in school but this time I wasn’t doing anything)
and
B) WTF does Clean Your Clock mean? My clock?
and
3) High Opal!
This is one of those little things that continued to dwell in the back recesses of my mind. Now there is one less.
From the Word Detective:
Looking at this, I would suggest:
“Fixing someone’s clock,” as idiom for killing someone makes perfect sense. The sense of “fix” here is not that of “to repair,” but “to make stationary.” To stop their clock. This is a totally natural metaphor for death. Like the 19th Century poem/song by Henry Clay Work:
If the expression was originally “fix your clock,” it seems probable that people would repeat it but misunderstand it as “repair your clock.” If you’ve replaced the idea with damaging the clock with that of servicing it, the change to “Clean your clock” is natural – it has a pleasing alliteration that “Fix your clock” lacks – although “Fix your clock” makes more sense as a threat of harm.