English · Idiom Candidate

sweep the board

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

Win everything or almost everything in a competition

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Thắng gần như mọi thứ trong một cuộc thi

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: cleaning a board

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

The Sonata No. 2 (1928) comes from Krenek's period of greatest celebrity, in the year after his operatic triumph Jonny spielt auf which swept the board with its rather undigested jazz influences.

If the reformists emerge as the largest group, they will sweep the board.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “sweep the board” mean?

Win everything or almost everything in a competition Literally: cleaning a board

Is “sweep the board” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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