Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To destroy completely.
  • intransitive verb To reduce to nonexistence.
  • intransitive verb To defeat decisively.
  • intransitive verb Physics To convert (a subatomic particle) to energy or high-energy particles by annihilation.
  • intransitive verb To be completely destructive.
  • intransitive verb Physics To participate in annihilation. Used of particles and antiparticles.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To reduce to nothing; deprive of existence; cause to cease to be.
  • To destroy the form or peculiar distinctive properties of, so that the specific thing no longer exists: as, to annihilate a forest by cutting and carrying away the trees; to annihilate an army; to annihilate a house by demolishing the structure; also, to destroy or eradicate, as a property or an attribute of a thing.
  • Annihilated.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Archaic Annihilated.
  • transitive verb To reduce to nothing or nonexistence; to destroy the existence of; to cause to cease to be.
  • transitive verb To destroy the form or peculiar distinctive properties of, so that the specific thing no longer exists.
  • transitive verb To destroy or eradicate, as a property or attribute of a thing; to make of no effect; to destroy the force, etc., of.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To reduce to nothing, to destroy, to eradicate.
  • verb archaic To treat as worthless, to vilify.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb kill in large numbers

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Late Latin annihilāre, annihilāt- : Latin ad-, ad- + Latin nihil, nothing; see ne in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin annihilō ("I reduce to nothing"), from ad ("to") + nihil ("nothing").

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word annihilate.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.