annihilate
Americanverb (used with object)
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annihilates,
present (3rd person singular)
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annihilated,
past participle, past
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annihilating
present participle
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to reduce to utter ruin or nonexistence; destroy utterly.
The heavy bombing almost annihilated the city.
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to destroy the collective existence or main body of; wipe out.
to annihilate an army.
- Synonyms:
- demolish, obliterate, smash
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to annul; make void.
to annihilate a law.
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to cancel the effect of; nullify.
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to defeat completely; vanquish.
Our basketball team annihilated the visiting team.
verb
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(tr) to destroy completely; extinguish
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informal (tr) to defeat totally, as in debate or argument
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(intr) physics to undergo annihilation
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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annihilatornoun
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annihilableadjective
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annihilativeadjective
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annihilatoryadjective
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unannihilatedadjective
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unannihilativeadjective
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unannihilatoryadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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annihilatesimple
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annihilatessimple
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have annihilatedperfect
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has annihilatedperfect
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am annihilatingprogressive
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are annihilatingprogressive
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is annihilatingprogressive
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have been annihilatingperfect progressive
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has been annihilatingperfect progressive
Past
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annihilatedsimple
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had annihilatedperfect
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was annihilatingprogressive
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were annihilatingprogressive
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had been annihilatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of annihilate
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English adnichilat(e) “destroyed,” from Late Latin annihilātus “brought to nothing,” past participle of annihilāre “to bring to nothing,” from Latin an- an- 2 + nihil “nothing” + -āre, infinitive suffix
Explanation
Killing ends when the thing you are killing (your sworn enemy, all hope, a pesky mosquito) is dead. Annihilate goes farther—when you annihilate something, you wipe all trace of it from the earth. You kill a person, but you annihilate a tribe, a town, or even a species. It's nice to think that the human race made it all the way up until the 16th century before annihilate came to mean what it does now. Might this have something to do with the increasing use of gunpowder around this time?
Vocabulary lists containing annihilate
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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:
Hannah Arendt wrote that totalitarians try to annihilate thought, to break our sense of reality with lies, whether in words and in images.
From Salon ● Jun. 13, 2026
Self-proclaimed experts usually attract trouble through hubris, though I’ve seen bank traders and hedge fund managers annihilate themselves with slavish beliefs in trading ranges.
From Barron's ● Jan. 14, 2026
However, theory suggests that when two WIMPs collide, they annihilate each other and release energetic particles, including gamma ray photons.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 29, 2025
I am covering this game for Radio 5 Live and part of me is thinking that Liverpool are going to click soon and just absolutely annihilate someone.
From BBC ● Sep. 25, 2025
They spake together, and they made a solemn pact that they should not annihilate each other in phrenzy of self-interest, but live in that place in amity; and thus was founded the city of Thebes.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson
“She annihilates people on the steep pitch that’s like a sheet of ice,” Street said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 14, 2026
I’ve learned that chemotherapy does kill cancer cells, but also annihilates other cells in the body, including the ones that produce hair.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 26, 2022
Meanwhile, deforestation, which annihilates the fungi along with their host trees, disrupts this whole underground, climate change-fighting ecosystem.
From BBC ● Jun. 18, 2022
Today’s most serious problem, which annihilates thoughtfulness about all others, is that a significant portion of the intelligentsia — the lumpen intelligentsia — cannot think.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 25, 2020
Also, this sort of farming annihilates the soil.
From "The Martian" by Andy Weir
Those two forms of matter should then have annihilated one another, leaving behind energy rather than the matter-filled universe we see today.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 23, 2026
Let’s take managed-care stocks, which have been annihilated year to date.
From Barron's ● Apr. 30, 2026
That this curiosity translates to cold, hard cash is fantastic news in the streaming era, when Netflix, Hulu and the like have all but annihilated the theatrical mid-budget film.
From Salon ● Mar. 19, 2026
They annihilated France but couldn't reproduce anything like that performance in Dublin.
From BBC ● Mar. 14, 2026
So most of the electrons and antielectrons would have annihilated with each other to produce more photons, leaving only a few electrons left over.
From "A Brief History of Time: And Other Essays" by Stephen Hawking
The Jewish holiday Purim celebrates their triumph roughly 2,500 years ago over a minister to the king bent on annihilating the empire’s Jews.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 3, 2026
Early on, researchers suspected that dark matter particles migh t be colliding and annihilating each other, creating intense bursts of radiation.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 5, 2025
But Ginsberg cautioned that dehumanization “didn't propose a compassion or tenderness or mutual involvement or Buddha nature as an alternative. It proposed a complete annihilating void and nothingness.”
From Salon ● Feb. 16, 2025
But Mr Pezeshkian, who was elected in July, adopted a more conciliatory tone than his hard-line predecessors, avoiding rhetoric about annihilating the Islamic Republic’s arch-enemy.
From BBC ● Sep. 26, 2024
He was as though suddenly and joyfully awakened from a dark annihilating stupor.
From "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley
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.
