purge of

purge (something) of (something)

1. To completely free or clean something of something unwanted. We'll need to purge the machine of the contaminated coolant before we begin operating it. Police have begun purging the streets of protesters.
2. To cleanse something of impure or sinful thoughts or feelings. I recommend you turn to prayer to purge your mind of those evil thoughts. Your obsessive focus on purging your congregation of sin has become a sin unto itself.
See also: of, purge
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

purge someone or something of someone or something

to rid someone or something of someone or something. The medicine is designed to purge the patient of the deadly toxin. We purged the list of the delinquent members.
See also: of, purge
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • a horse of another
  • a horse of another color
  • a horse of another colour
  • a/the feel of (something)
  • (I) wouldn't (do something) if I were you
  • (do) (you) want to make something of it?
  • a straw will show which way the wind blows
  • a crack at (someone or something)
  • all right
  • (you) wanna make something of it?
References in periodicals archive
The students' anger had been stoked by a blatantly political purge of university professors and students, a crackdown on basic personal freedoms, and worries that the government's economic mismanagement and international provocations are threatening their future.
b there has been a political purge of reform-minded professors and students.
Iran's students speak out: students played a key role in the 1979 revolution. Until recently, they had been largely silenced under Ahmadinejad's regime
The impact of both the sexual abuse scandal and Navarro-Valls's proposed purge of gay priests remains uncertain.
Mass confusion: the Roman Catholic Church blurs the clear lines between homosexuality and pedophilia as a Vatican official pins the blame for the Boston sex-abuse scandal on gay priests. (Religion)
Philip Watts's study returns to the historical phenomenon of epuration or "purge" trials with which postwar France tried to exonerate itself from the shame of Vichy and its supporters, and examines how four literary figures who had, previous to the purge trials, assumed different ideological "camps" -- Sartre and Eluard on one side, Blanchot and Celine on the other -- and responded to the purge of writers and intellectuals.
Allegories of the Purge: How Literature Responded to the Postwar Trials of Writers and Intellectuals in France