تمیز

What it means

تمیز (tamiz) means clean, neat, or tidy. The word is borrowed from Turkic, where the root relates to sifting or distinguishing, and the meaning in Persian settled on physical cleanliness and neatness of appearance. The verb تمیز کردن (tamiz kardan) means to clean or to tidy something, and تمیز شدن (tamiz shodan) means to become clean. Its direct antonym is کثیف (kasif, dirty). In informal speech تمیز can also be used appreciatively for something precise or well executed, similar to saying neat or clean in English slang, though this extended sense is less common than the physical one. A close synonym in the neat-appearance sense is مرتب (moratab, orderly).

How to use it

• دستات رو تمیز کن. (dastât ro tamiz kon.) “Clean your hands.”
• خونه تمیزه؟ (khune tamize?) “Is the house clean?”
• لباسم کثیف شد، باید تمیزش کنم. (lebâsam kasif shod, bâyad tamizash konam.) “My clothes got dirty, I need to clean them.”
• کارش خیلی تمیز بود. (kâresh kheyli tamiz bud.) “His work was very neat.”

Cultural note

Cleanliness holds a prominent place in Iranian domestic culture, shaped by both pre-Islamic Persian values and Islamic ritual purity requirements (taharah). Keeping a تمیز home is a point of household pride, and guests arriving to a clean space read it as a mark of respect toward them. Iranian mothers are culturally stereotyped for their meticulous cleaning, and expressions like خونه باید تمیز باشه (the house must be clean) carry almost moral weight in family discourse. The annual khaneh-tekani (خانه‌تکانی), the deep-cleaning of the house before Nowruz, is an extension of this value taken to its ritual extreme.

References

• Dehkhoda
• Vajehyab