exterminate
verb
Did you know?
Originally, to exterminate something was to banish it or drive it away. And it is this meaning that can be found in the Latin origin of "exterminate." "Exterminate" comes from "exterminatus," the past participle of exterminare, meaning "to drive beyond the boundaries." The Latin word exterminare was formed from the prefix ex- ("out of" or "outside") and "terminus" ("boundary"). Not much more than a century after its introduction to English, "exterminate" came to denote destroying or utterly putting an end to something. And that's the use with which the word is usually employed today.
Examples of exterminate in a Sentence
Massimo Calabresi/dachau, TIME, 22 Feb. 2025
In the human body, for example, phages typically don’t exterminate their host bacteria.
—Carl Zimmer, New York Times, 19 Feb. 2025
Inside the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, the soldiers liberated roughly 7,000 prisoners who had been brutalized by a Nazi regime hell-bent on exterminating the Jewish people.
—Jesse Kirsch, NBC News, 27 Jan. 2025
The Germans exterminated about a million Jews in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
—Martin Kimel, Baltimore Sun, 26 Jan. 2025
See All Example Sentences for exterminate
Cite this Entry
“Exterminate.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exterminate. Accessed 3 Mar. 2025.
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exterminate
verb
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