What's the difference between clean and sterile?

Clean


Definition:

  • (superl.) Free from dirt or filth; as, clean clothes.
  • (superl.) Free from that which is useless or injurious; without defects; as, clean land; clean timber.
  • (superl.) Free from awkwardness; not bungling; adroit; dexterous; as, aclean trick; a clean leap over a fence.
  • (superl.) Free from errors and vulgarisms; as, a clean style.
  • (superl.) Free from restraint or neglect; complete; entire.
  • (superl.) Free from moral defilement; sinless; pure.
  • (superl.) Free from ceremonial defilement.
  • (superl.) Free from that which is corrupting to the morals; pure in tone; healthy.
  • (superl.) Well-proportioned; shapely; as, clean limbs.
  • (adv.) Without limitation or remainder; quite; perfectly; wholly; entirely.
  • (adv.) Without miscarriage; not bunglingly; dexterously.
  • (a.) To render clean; to free from whatever is foul, offensive, or extraneous; to purify; to cleanse.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Squadron Leader Kevin Harris, commander of the Merlins at Camp Bastion, the main British base in Helmand, praised the crews, adding: "The Merlins will undergo an extensive programme of maintenance and cleaning before being packed up, ensuring they return to the UK in good order."
  • (2) After four years of existence, many evaluations were able to show the qualities of this system regarding root canal penetration, cleaning and shaping.
  • (3) Other recommendations for immediate action included a review of the Nursing and Midwifery Council and the General Medical Council for doctors, with possible changes to their structures; the possible transfer of powers to launch criminal prosecutions for care scandals from the Health and Safety Executive to the Care Quality Council; and a new inspection regime, which would focus more closely on how clean, safe and caring hospitals were.
  • (4) I usually use them as a rag with which to clean the toilet but I didn’t have anything else to wear today because I’m so fat.” While this exchange will sound baffling to outsiders, to Brits it actually sounds like this: “You like my dress?
  • (5) From the treatment group 23 patients could be assessed: 2 had discontinued clean intermittent self-catheterization due to urethral hemorrhage, 2 died during the observation period and 1 was lost to followup.
  • (6) The corresponding hydrides, mono-n-butyltin hydride, di-n-butyltin hydride, tri-n-butyltin hydride, monophenyltin hydride, diphenyltin hydride triphenyltin hydride, are detected by electron-capture gas chromatography after clean-up by silica gel column chromatography.
  • (7) Gassmann, whose late father, Vittorio , was a critically acclaimed star of Italian cinema in its heyday in the 1960s, tweeted over the weekend with the hashtag #Romasonoio (I am Rome), calling on the city’s residents to be an example of civility and clean up their own little corners of Rome with pride.
  • (8) Will the rate of late (four to five years) wound infection after operations done in a clean-air enclosure be lower than that after procedures done in a "normal" operating-room environment using preoperative, operative, and postoperative antibiotics?
  • (9) While there has been almost no political reform during their terms of office, there have been several ambitious steps forward in terms of environmental policy: anti-desertification campaigns; tree planting; an environmental transparency law; adoption of carbon targets; eco-services compensation; eco accounting; caps on water; lower economic growth targets; the 12th Five-Year Plan; debate and increased monitoring of PM2.5 [fine particulate matter] and huge investments in eco-cities, "clean car" manufacturing, public transport, energy-saving devices and renewable technology.
  • (10) Several studies have found that pollution and climate change disproportionately affect the poor , which means boosting clean energy generation and cutting pollution could also simultaneously reduce global inequality .
  • (11) The Clean Air Act (CAA) Amendments of 1990 was signed into law by President Bush on November 15, 1990.
  • (12) She followed that with a job at Bibendum – she still talks of Simon Hopkinson, "such an elegant cook, so particular and clean and efficient", with deep reverence – and another at Roscoff in Northern Ireland.
  • (13) Data support the use of clean intermittent catheterization under the conditions used in this study, including the use of a sterile catheter each day and careful monitoring of infection and technique.
  • (14) During this period, the microbial flora of the isolator was unchanged, and the time required to clean the cages was reduced by 50%.
  • (15) Rayburn, who was also told by his jobcentre he would lose his benefits if he did not work without pay, said he spent almost two months stacking and cleaning shelves and sometimes doing night shifts.
  • (16) Although a clean step response or the ensemble average of several responses contaminated with noise is needed for the generation of the filter, random noise of magnitude less than or equal to 0.5% added to the response to be corrected does not impair the correction severely.
  • (17) Nick Nuttall, a spokesman for UNEP, said the latest findings should encourage more governments to follow moves by some politicians to invest billions of dollars in clean energy and efficiency as a way of curbing greenhouse gases.
  • (18) And that is why we have taken bold action at home – by making historic investments in renewable energy; by putting our people to work increasing efficiency in our homes and buildings; and by pursuing comprehensive legislation to transform to a clean energy economy.
  • (19) A government-commissioned review into the RET, headed by the businessman and climate change sceptic Dick Warburton, concluded that while it has largely achieved its aims and helped create jobs in clean energy, it should be either wound back or cut off entirely.
  • (20) The studies allow the interpretation that retention of food in the diverticula is not the reason for the bacterial miscolonization of the duodenum and the biliary tract, but in patients with diverticula a disturbed self-cleaning mechanism is present.

Sterile


Definition:

  • (a.) Producing little or no crop; barren; unfruitful; unproductive; not fertile; as, sterile land; a sterile desert; a sterile year.
  • (a.) Incapable of reproduction; unfitted for reproduction of offspring; not able to germinate or bear fruit; unfruitful; as, a sterile flower, which bears only stamens.
  • (a.) Free from reproductive spores or germs; as, a sterile fluid.
  • (a.) Fig.: Barren of ideas; destitute of sentiment; as, a sterile production or author.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Theoretical findings on sterilization and disinfection measures are useless for the dental practice if their efficiency is put into question due to insufficient consideration of the special conditions of dental treatment.
  • (2) Sterile, pruritic papules and papulopustules that formed annular rings developed on the back of a 58-year-old woman.
  • (3) Gamma-irradiated splenic homogenates of armadillos infected with M. leprae proved sterile by conventional tests and media.
  • (4) All of the rabbits immunized with FCA developed sterile subcutaneous abscesses.
  • (5) The disappearance of the herbicide, Avadex (40% diallate), from five agricultural soils (differing in either pH, carbon content, or nitrogen content), incubated under sterile and non-sterile conditions, was followed for a period of 20 weeks.
  • (6) During periods of wet steam it was impossible to maintain consistent sterility of the mouse pellets even using a cycle of 126 degrees C for 60 minutes.
  • (7) Following the hypothesis that infertile patients may present emotional conflicts with regard to the wish of having a child, psychodynamic interviews were carried out with 116 infertile couples concomitantly with their first consultation at the Sterility Department.
  • (8) Sterilization rates at the time of abortions increased with increasing age and with increasing gravidity, but the total rates, adjusted for age and gravidity of patients, have changed little in the past 15 years.
  • (9) It remains to be seen, whether the small number and sterility causes were coincidental or manifest themselves in future, especially, if the sterility concerned can be classified as idiopathic.
  • (10) The results of the study suggest that perhaps tobramycin of cefotaxime-impregnated PMMA beads would produce local levels of antibiotic high enough to sterilize a given dead space for a period of 28 days.
  • (11) A relationship between the level of sterility induced by juvenoids and reductions in nymph-to-adult ratios permitted formulation of a biological action threshold for regulating treatment.
  • (12) Using sterile conditions, antibodies to G were incubated with a suspension of transformed cells at 4 degrees C, unbound antibodies were then removed, and the cells were incubated with the immunoabsorbent (3 micron magnetic beads; J. Ugelstad et al.
  • (13) There is a certain degree of swagger, a sudden interruption of panache, as Alan Moore enters the rather sterile Waterstones office where he has agreed to speak to me.
  • (14) The antibacterial property was evaluated by the width and sterility of the clear zone in the bacterial culture plates.
  • (15) Three mouse models of male-limited, hybrid-type sterility are available: the sterility controlled by the T-t genetic complex, the hybrid sterility system including the Hst-1 gene, and the sterility of carriers of various chromosomal anomalies.
  • (16) The main cause of sterility was complete tubal occlusion in 65.6% of the cases due to a high incidence of pelvic inflammatory diseases in the investigated patients.
  • (17) Highly educated women are less likely than those with little education to elect sterilizations and more likely to rely on barrier methods.
  • (18) Among 137 consecutive patients who had a sterile body site cultured for mycobacteria within 3 months of their first AIDS-defining episode of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, median survival was significantly shorter in those with disseminated MAC infection (107 days; 95% confidence interval [CI] 55-179) than those with negative cultures (275 days; 95% CI 230-318; P less than .01), even after controlling for age, absolute lymphocyte count, and hemoglobin concentration.
  • (19) Factors of negligible importance prognostically were: complete sterilization at mammary and axillary level after radiotherapy, persistence of florid cancer tissue at mammary level and histiocytosis of the axillary lymph nodes.
  • (20) The teflon dish is re-usable, resistant to sterilization procedures, and easy to assemble.