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Original · left

Cleaning (housework)

Making a home or object free of dirt and mess.

First in use: ancient / pre-modern
Duplicate · right

Data cleansing

Detecting and fixing corrupt, inaccurate or duplicate records in a dataset.

First in use: the 1990s

Cleaning / Cleaning (housework) / Data cleansing

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Canonical todayMeasuring…
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Duplicate share · 12 mo—
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Colour keyGrey · original meaningGreen · duplicate meaningAmber · contested (40–60%)How colours work

Housework vs. fixing bad rows.

Which meaning of Cleaning is the original, and which one is the duplicate riding on its name? Cleaning (housework) came first (ancient / pre-modern). Data cleansing arrived in the 1990s. The data below shows which one owns the word now.

Wikipedia pageviews since 2015

Cleaning (housework)Data cleansing
English Wikipedia pageviews since July 2015 load here.

Duplicate's share of attention

Green line = duplicate's % · above 60 it owns the word · below 40 the original does

Share-of-attention line loads here.

The case for each meaning

Sourced definitions, usage stats and quotes

Original · ancient / pre-modern

Cleaning (housework)

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Duplicate · the 1990s

Data cleansing

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More duplicated terms

Data & databases