One way to hold this phrase: the road is empty now, and someone is telling you so. Clear is the picture of nothing in the way and nothing left behind; all says the whole of it is like that. What the phrase names is not the emptiness itself but the word that announces it — a everyone can hear, or a person saying you may go. Either way it arrives from outside you, and until it arrives you wait.

可以想成:路上現在空了,而且有人來告訴你空了。clear 的畫面是沒有東西擋著、也沒有東西留下,all 則是「整片都這樣」。但這個詞真正指的不是那片空,而是宣布它的那個訊息。訊息可能是一聲大家都聽得到的警報,也可能是一個有權的人說「可以了」。兩種情況有個共同點:它都是從你之外送過來的,在它送到之前,你只能等。這也是為什麼 wait for、get、hear 這幾個動詞跟它特別合,而且前面幾乎都要加 the。

From the word’s history

Wiktionary records the phrase simply as all + clear.

Wiktionary 把這個說法的來源記成 all + clear 兩個字組成,沒有更進一步的說明;所以上面的畫面只是把這兩個字的意思接起來,不是歷史考證。

Wiktionary entry 'all clear' (etymology_text: 'all + clear'), supplied in this packet

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