self-annihilation
Americannoun
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self-destruction; suicide.
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surrender, abnegation, or immolation of the self in mystic contemplation of or union with God.
noun
Etymology
Origin of self-annihilation
First recorded in 1640–50
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.
In 2025 they discovered that the existential crisis it described wasn’t after all as big as any of the ones they face from military, industrial collapse, demographic self-annihilation and industrial decay.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 15, 2025
It’s a quintessential Joan Didion image: She imagines the day after the human race is gone, capturing both apocalyptic self-annihilation and wonder at the tremendous efforts we make to do something meaningful with our time.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 4, 2025
Aronofsky and Hunter leave little to the imagination, emphasizing at every graphic turn that, for Charlie, food isn’t the stuff of life-giving nourishment, but a vector for compulsion and self-annihilation.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 20, 2022
In the end, exhausted by the moral confusion and internal contradictions, these crisis cults yearn for self-annihilation.
From Salon ● Nov. 1, 2020
Unhesitatingly recognising the hand of the God the very thought of whom crushed him into self-annihilation, Edwards is unconsciously troubled by the strange contrast between the effect and the stupendous cause assigned for it.
From Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) by Sir Leslie Stephen
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
