abolish
Americanverb (used with object)
verb
Related Words
Abolish, eradicate, stamp out mean to do away completely with something. To abolish is to cause to cease, often by a summary order: to abolish a requirement. Stamp out implies forcibly making an end to something considered undesirable or harmful: to stamp out the opium traffic. Eradicate (literally, to tear out by the roots ), a formal word, suggests extirpation, leaving no vestige or trace: to eradicate all use of child labor.
Other Word Forms
- abolishable adjective
- abolisher noun
- abolishment noun
- unabolishable adjective
- unabolished adjective
- well-abolished adjective
Etymology
Origin of abolish
First recorded in 1425–75; late Middle English, from Middle French aboliss-, long stem of abolir, from Latin abolēre “to destroy, efface”
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.
“Or maybe abolish is the word. I hear talk of folks wanting to abolish slavery,” I said hesitantly.
From Literature
Some of this friction is inevitable; care tasks are cyclical, after all, and no system abolishes effort entirely.
From Salon
The narrative that slavery “ended in 1865” with the 13th Amendment obscures the reality that abolition occurred unevenly across the Americas, with some nations abolishing slavery decades earlier than the United States.
From Los Angeles Times
There has also been unease from some councils about spending money on elections for councillor positions that will shortly be abolished as part of the overhaul.
From BBC
She said they had raised concerns about their capacity to run "resource-intensive elections to councils who may be shortly abolished", alongside the reorganisation of local government.
From BBC
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.
