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
In some models, when two of these particles meet, they annihilate and produce high-energy radiation such as gamma rays.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 10, 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
The spokesperson added: "We stand ready to annihilate Ms Pisciotta's tall tales before a jury − an exoneration so inevitable that even she, lost in her fog of fantasy, must surely see it coming."
From BBC ● Jul. 24, 2025
But instead of finding sad and mournful people pondering all the ways that others annihilate themselves, Petey found the Rude boys lurking around the front of the cafe.
From "Bone Gap" by Laura Ruby
“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
The drill annihilates Diggins’s legs, but she does it for moments such as this one.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 21, 2018
Also, this sort of farming annihilates the soil.
From "The Martian" by Andy Weir
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
He annihilated the Carthaginians and Numidians standing in his way, which forced Hannibal to retreat from southern Italy to fight what each man hoped would be “a final battle” at Zama.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 16, 2025
Two brand-new 737 Max airliners crashing in 2018 and 2019 annihilated public trust in Boeing, and the company has struggled to find its footing ever since.
From Slate ● Mar. 3, 2025
Fischer was as dominant against Larsen as he’d been against Taimanov: He annihilated the Dane, shutting him out and winning every game.
From "Endgame" by Frank Brady
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
Siegel compared this to humans intentionally annihilating a group of single-celled organisms in Europa's sub-surface oceans.
From Salon ● Oct. 28, 2023
It started with Yordan Alvarez annihilating a 1-1 fastball, sending a low line drive like a Tiger Woods’ 1-iron over the wall in deep right-center.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 27, 2023
How was it possible that such effort, such plain virtue, could overnight be reduced to this—smoke, thinning as it rose and was received by the big, annihilating sky?
From "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote
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.
