neat

adjective11

1. •
   in good order and free of dirt, with nothing left lying about

   • My room is neat because I tidied it this morning.
   • She has very neat hair.
2. •
   Having a simple elegance or style; clean, trim, tidy, tasteful.

   • The front room was neat and carefully arranged for the guests.
3. •
   (US, informal) Good, excellent, desirable; interesting; cool.

   • Hey, neat convertible, man.
4. •
   Well-executed or delivered; clever, skillful, precise.

   • Having the two protagonists meet in the last act was a particularly neat touch.
5. •
   Free from contaminants or impurities, unadulterated.

   • At one side of the palette there is white, at the other black; and neither is ever used ‘neat.’ — 1932
6. •
   Unexposed to dilutionary liquids, especially water.
7. •
   At full strength, free from dilution (usually with water), undiluted

   • A cup of neate wine of Orleance, That never came neer the brewers of England. — 1595
8. •
   Neither straight up nor on the rocks

   • I like my whisky neat, so you have no need for ice at all.
9. •
   Conditions with a liquid reagent or gas performed with no standard solvent or cosolvent.

   • The Arbuzov reaction is performed by adding the bromide to the phosphite, neat.
   • The molecular beam was neat acetylene.
10. •
    Facile; missing complexity or details in the favor of convenience or simplicity.

    • Courts should not reduce this case to a neat set of legal rules.
11. •
    (no longer used) With all deductions or allowances made; net.

    • Why without telling the least title of Falshood, within the space of the last Week’s Play, the Gains of Count Cog, really amounted to no less than Twenty Thousand Pounds Sterling neat Money. — 1720

exclamation2

1. •
   Used to signify a job well done.
2. •
   Used to signify approval.

noun3

1. •
   (informal) An artificial intelligence researcher who believes that solutions should be elegant, clear and provably correct. Compare scruffy.
2. •
   (no longer used) A bull or cow.

   • Who both by his calfe, & his lambe wil be known, / may well kill a neate and a shepe of his owne. / And he that wil reare up a pyg in his house, / hath cheaper his bacon, and sweter his souse. — 1557
3. •
   [plural only] (no longer used) Cattle collectively.

   • From thence into the open fields he fled, / Whereas the Heardes were keeping of their neat / And shepheards singing to their flockes, that fed, — 1596

noun2

1. •
   Acronym of non-exercise activity thermogenesis.
2. •
   Acronym of neuroevolution of augmenting topologies, a genetic algorithm for the generation of evolving artificial neural networks.