destruction
Americannoun
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destructions
plural
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the act of destroying.
wanton destruction of a town.
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the condition of being destroyed; demolition; annihilation.
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a cause or means of destroying.
noun
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the act of destroying or state of being destroyed; demolition
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a cause of ruin or means of destroying
Synonym Usage
See ruin.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of destruction
First recorded in 1275–1325; Middle English (from Anglo-French ), from Latin dēstructiōn- (stem of dēstructiō ), equivalent to dēstruct(us) (past participle of dēstruere; see destroy) + -iōn- -ion
Explanation
Destruction is damage so bad, things must be replaced, not fixed. Tornadoes often leave a trail of destruction, damaging neighborhoods and knocking down houses. The Latin word destructionem, "a pulling down," is the root of destruction. When destruction strikes, things do get pulled down — from houses in the case of natural disasters or a big display of canned soups in the case of a careless shopper. Sometimes, destruction refers to death, as when critics of war talk about the resulting destruction of human life.
Vocabulary lists containing destruction
Biodiversity and Humans - Middle School and High School
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Biodiversity and Humans - Introductory
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"Fire and Ice"
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Will AI truly become an agent of mass destruction?
From Salon ● Sep. 16, 2026
"There is a regulatory vacuum because Article 4 of the 1967 treaty only forbids weapons of mass destruction and nuclear weapons in orbit," said space law expert Laetitia Cesari.
From Barron's ● Sep. 15, 2026
The response from the people of Stockholm wasn’t to blame U.S. policies for the deaths and destruction in New York and Washington.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 15, 2026
Those corrections allowed the researchers to conclude that the unusually strong formaldehyde signal was genuine and could be used to track methane destruction within the volcanic cloud.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 15, 2026
I'd seen what Ishtar could do, how she'd led humans to their destruction over all those centuries.
From "City of the Plague God" by Sarwat Chadda
Renewed tensions in the Middle East since July and destructions of refining capacity in Russia have raised energy costs again, in particular gas prices, leading to higher inflation and central-bank rate-rise expectations.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 2, 2026
As Perry noted, pesticides are not alone in targeting sperm for destructions.
From Salon ● Nov. 16, 2023
Podolyak added that the barrage was “an undeniable manifestation” of Russia’s “terrorist activity, legally documented by numerous destructions and victims.”
From Washington Times ● Aug. 15, 2023
The story under that headline reported that Bankman-Fried’s entire fortune had been “wiped out” in “one of history’s greatest-ever destructions of wealth.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 14, 2022
To me accordingly they have subjected everything; and they have removed—on account of the success of the chiefs of my enemies—the silver from the palaces, and all else, on account of his destructions.
From Egyptian Literature Comprising Egyptian tales, hymns, litanies, invocations, the Book of the Dead, and cuneiform writings by Epiphanius Wilson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
