To dupe or defraud; to wipe out financially. This term may have been derived from the older to be cleaned out, which dates from the early nineteenth century and has precisely the same meaning. The current cliché is American slang dating from the mid-twentieth century, when commercial dry-cleaning establishments became commonplace, but it probably originated, like the older term, among gamblers. H. MacLennan used it in Precipice (1949): “He had taken Carl to the cleaners this time.”