"to clean so.'s clock" = "to punch so. in the face"

The last time we discussed this phrase, Alex suggested "die Visage polieren" as a translation, which captures the spirit of the phrase nicely:

  related discussion:to clean the clock

Vielen Dank, bei LEO gab es leider auf diese Anfrage keinen Verweis auf das Forum.

Leser: You are welcome. I agree finding archived discussions can be tricky at times. Next time you search for a phrase, try entering the words one at a time in addition to searchin for the whole phrase. In this case, if you search LEO for "clean", you'll find a whole slew of links to archived discussions at the bottom of the generated page, one of which is "to clean the clock (Follow Ups: 4)"

"Kennedy [...] wanted to know about people, not just who they were but what they knew. By the time Kennedy was finished with them, [...] he had cleaned their clocks." (in: Robert Timberg, "The Nightingale's Song", S. 287)

Eine schöne Metapher!

Although this is an old thread, it nonetheless deserves to be free of misinformation. The suggestion in #5 is wrong. The idiom to clean someone's clock has nothing to do with getting to know someone well, although that may well be a way to gain knowledge to use to knock down the other person's arguments. First figure out what makes someone tick, then clean his or her clock. ;)

LEO could use an entry for the idiom, which does not just mean to punch someone in the face, as tempting as that definition is when considering that clocks and people both have faces.

Edit: it's a start ... Siehe auch: to clean someone's clock