Definitions

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

  • noun The act of terminating or the condition of being terminated.
  • noun The end of something in time; the conclusion.
  • noun An end of something in space; a limit or edge.
  • noun A result; an outcome.
  • noun Linguistics The end of a word, as a suffix, inflectional ending, or final morpheme.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In ins. law, the end of the. voyage of a vessel, namely, when it has been safely moored at the dock of its destination for twenty-four hours. The risk on the cargo is not ended by this fact.
  • noun Bound; limit in space or extent: as, the termination of a field.
  • noun The act of limiting, or setting bounds; the act of terminating; the act of ending or concluding: as, Thursday was set for the termination of the debate.
  • noun End in time or existence: as, the termination of life.
  • noun In grammar, the end or ending of a word; the part annexed to the root or stem of an inflected word (a case-ending or other formative), or in general a syllable or letter, or number of letters, at the end of a word.
  • noun Conclusion; completion; issue; result: as, the affair was brought to a happy termination.
  • noun Decision; determination.
  • noun That which ends or finishes off, as, in architecture, a finial or a pinnacle.
  • noun Word; term.
  • noun The extremity of a crystal when formed by one or more crystalline faces. A crystal whose natural end has been broken off is said to be without termination.

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

  • noun The act of terminating, or of limiting or setting bounds; the act of ending or concluding.
  • noun That which ends or bounds; limit in space or extent; bound; end.
  • noun End in time or existence.
  • noun End; conclusion; result.
  • noun rare Last purpose of design.
  • noun R. & Obs. A word; a term.
  • noun (Gram.) The ending of a word; a final syllable or letter; the part added to a stem in inflection.

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

  • noun The process of terminating or the state of being terminated.
  • noun The process of firing an employee; ending one's employment at a business for any reason.
  • noun An end in time; a conclusion.
  • noun An end in space; an edge or limit.
  • noun An outcome or result.
  • noun The last part of a word; a suffix.
  • noun medicine An induced abortion.
  • noun obsolete (rare) A word, a term.

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

  • noun the end of a word (a suffix or inflectional ending or final morpheme)
  • noun the act of ending something
  • noun a coming to an end of a contract period
  • noun something that results
  • noun a place where something ends or is complete

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin terminationem (accusative of terminatio).

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Examples

Comments

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  • An ugly word used to hide the ugly meaning of better words when the ugliness they show should be exposed.

    January 3, 2008

  • The ugliest use I can think of is when this word is used in place of abortion.

    January 3, 2008