annihilation
[uh-nahy-uh-ley-shuh n]
- an act or instance of annihilating, or of completely destroying or defeating someone or something: the brutal annihilation of millions of people.
- the state of being annihilated; total destruction; extinction: fear of nuclear annihilation.
- Physics.
- Also called pair annihilation.the process in which a particle and antiparticle unite, annihilate each other, and produce one or more photons.Compare positronium.
- the conversion of rest mass into energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation.
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Origin of annihilation
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Related Words
liquidationeradicationexterminationeliminationextinctiondemolitiondestructiondecimationdissolutionobliterationmassacreruinslaughtererasureretractionvoidanceinvalidationexpunctionabrogationnegationExamples from the Web for annihilation
Contemporary Examples
It was three or four years of annihilation, and by the end my stomach was in bits.
The consequences of a drug conviction amount to the annihilation of citizenship.
Winters uses that cataclysmic event to examine the slow deterioration of communal life in the face of annihilation.
If anything he was much more conservative than JFK, why would Castro risk the annihilation of his country to make him president?
Not to mention his infamous photo of the annihilation of a $100,000 Birkin bag.
Celebrity Photographer Tyler Shields Exposes ‘The Dirty Side of Glamour’Justin Jones
November 6, 2013
Historical Examples
Chip's way of saying yes was one of his chief weapons of annihilation.
Chip, of the Flying UB. M. Bower
I—I—ugh, ugh, I know what you want:—a consolidation and annihilation of the States.
The Politician Out-WittedSamuel Low
He clearly saw that the isolation of ideas or classes is the annihilation of reasoning.
SophistPlato
The quietness that came over me was like a foretaste of annihilation.
The Shadow-LineJoseph Conrad
To-night he had gone to bed sternly resolved on a while of annihilation.
In a Little TownRupert Hughes
annihilation
- total destruction
- the act of annihilating
- physics the destruction of a particle and its antiparticle when they collide. The annihilation of an electron with a positron generates two or, very rarely, three photons of annihilation radiation . The annihilation of a nucleon with its antiparticle generates several pions
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Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for annihilation
n.
1630s, from Middle French annihilation (restored from Old French anichilacion, 14c.), or directly from Late Latin annihilationem (nominative annihilatio), noun of action from past participle stem of annihilare (see annihilate).
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper