Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- transitive verb To destroy totally; kill off.
- transitive verb To render absent or nonexistent: synonym: eliminate.
- transitive verb To pull up by the roots.
- transitive verb To remove by surgery.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To pull up by the roots; root out; eradicate; get rid of; expel; destroy totally: as, to
extirpate weeds or noxious plants from a field; to extirpate cancer or a tumor; to extirpate a sect; to extirpate error or heresy. - Synonyms To uproot, exterminate, abolish, annihilate.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To pluck up by the stem or root; to root out; to eradicate, literally or figuratively; to destroy wholly
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb transitive, obsolete To clear an area of
roots andstumps . - verb transitive To pull up by the roots;
uproot . - verb transitive To
destroy completely; toannihilate . - verb transitive To
surgically remove.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb destroy completely, as if down to the roots
- verb surgically remove (an organ)
- verb pull up by or as if by the roots
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The English colonists were thus fulfilling their responsibility to protect as they proceeded to "extirpate" and "exterminate" the natives, in their words -- and for their own good, their honored successors explained.
MRZine.org 2009
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Perhaps some truly believe society must be arranged to extirpate any sign of differences between groups.
Racism Is Everywhere . . . Statistically Jr. Holman W. Jenkins 2012
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Well, it seems that lobbies have been able to extirpate themselves from this embarrassing regulation.
Valerie Orsoni: Too Much Calorie Info Will Fatten America Up Valerie Orsoni 2011
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Well, it seems that lobbies have been able to extirpate themselves from this embarrassing regulation.
Valerie Orsoni: Too Much Calorie Info Will Fatten America Up Valerie Orsoni 2011
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He was pleased that God had promoted the true faith “so honorably” and that the French monarchy had been able to “extirpate the poisonous roots with such prudence.”
Bloodlust Russell Jacoby 2011
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Alma's mission is to extirpate the black rats and other non-native species that are overrunning the islands, and Dave is bent on stopping the slaughter.
First the Settlers, Then the Settled Sam Sacks 2011
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He was pleased that God had promoted the true faith “so honorably” and that the French monarchy had been able to “extirpate the poisonous roots with such prudence.”
Bloodlust Russell Jacoby 2011
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Indeed, Jefferson's writings on Indians are filled with the straightforward assertion that the natives are to be given a simple choice - to be "extirpate [d] from the earth" or to remove themselves out of the Americans 'way.
New World Apocalypse, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009
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And the single best example of that external control was the attempt to limit – and implicitly, extirpate – chattel slavery.
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The many weeds in the lawn revealed a deep personality difference: Dad, as an impatient mechanical engineer, liked the instant solution of digging them up one by one from close enough to extirpate all the roots.
rolig commented on the word extirpate
"At the same time white settlements were growing, of fascinatingly different character, from Canada with its fractious French, to Australia and its origins as a huge prison camp, to the model colony of New Zealand with its sturdy free farmers. In each case, the creation of what would one day be prosperous liberal democracies involved the expropriation and sometimes the extirpation of the indigenous inhabitants, a process openly welcomed by some intelligent and supposedly enlightened Englishmen in the name of progress."
– Geoffrey Wheatcroft, "Little Britain" (review of The Decline and Fall of the British Empire 1781–1997, by Piers Brendon), New York Times (21 Nov 2008).
November 22, 2008
vendingmachine commented on the word extirpate
Genus: Puma
Cougar Puma concolor (extirpated).
Also used to label fauna that has disappeared from a particular area. In this case, cougars.
August 11, 2015