ANNIHILATE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does annihilate mean? 

• ANNIHILATE (verb)
  The verb ANNIHILATE has 1 sense:

1. kill in large numbers

  Familiarity information: ANNIHILATE used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ANNIHILATE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they annihilate    ... he / she / it annihilates   
Past simple: annihilated   
Past participle: annihilated   
-ing form: annihilating   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Kill in large numbers

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Synonyms:

annihilate; carry off; decimate; eliminate; eradicate; extinguish; wipe out

Context example:

the plague wiped out an entire population

Hypernyms (to "annihilate" is one way to...):

kill (cause to die; put to death, usually intentionally or knowingly)

Verb group:

decimate (kill one in every ten, as of mutineers in Roman armies)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s somebody
Something ----s somebody

Derivation:

annihilation (destruction by annihilating something)

annihilation (total destruction)

annihilative (wreaking or capable of wreaking complete destruction)

annihilator (a total destroyer)

 Context examples 

But it was not Wolf Larsen’s whim to annihilate him.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

It has reappeared to annihilate me, all through my life, in connexion with all kinds of subjects.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

You cannot answer Berkeley, even if you have annihilated Kant, and yet, perforce, you assume that Berkeley is wrong when you affirm that science proves the non-existence of God, or, as much to the point, the existence of matter.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

For if, in its perihelion, it should approach within a certain degree of the sun (as by their calculations they have reason to dread) it will receive a degree of heat ten thousand times more intense than that of red hot glowing iron, and in its absence from the sun, carry a blazing tail ten hundred thousand and fourteen miles long, through which, if the earth should pass at the distance of one hundred thousand miles from the nucleus, or main body of the comet, it must in its passage be set on fire, and reduced to ashes: that the sun, daily spending its rays without any nutriment to supply them, will at last be wholly consumed and annihilated; which must be attended with the destruction of this earth, and of all the planets that receive their light from it.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

He shook his head and beckoned her to come away, but she was fascinated just then by the freedom of Speculative Philosophy, and kept her seat, trying to find out what the wise gentlemen intended to rely upon after they had annihilated all the old beliefs.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Annihilated in a moment.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

One afternoon, after twenty minutes of desperate efforts to annihilate each other according to set rules that did not permit kicking, striking below the belt, nor hitting when one was down, Cheese-Face, panting for breath and reeling, offered to call it quits.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

He did not give the complacent wraith any name, but he took her for his heroine and grew quite fond of her, as well he might, for he gifted her with every gift and grace under the sun, and escorted her, unscathed, through trials which would have annihilated any mortal woman.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)