annihilation

American  

[uh-nahy-uh-lay-shuhn] / əˌnaɪ əˈleɪ ʃən /

noun

• annihilations
  plural

1. an act or instance of annihilating, or of completely destroying or defeating someone or something.

   the brutal annihilation of millions of people.

2. the state of being annihilated; total destruction; extinction.

   fear of nuclear annihilation.

3. Physics.

   1. Also called pair annihilation. the process in which a particle and antiparticle unite, annihilate each other, and produce one or more photons.

   2. the conversion of rest mass into energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation.

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annihilation British  

/ əˌnaɪəˈleɪʃən /

noun

1. total destruction

2. the act of annihilating

3. 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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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• annihilations
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of annihilation

First recorded in 1630–40; from French or directly from Late Latin annihilātiōn- (stem of annihilātiō ); see origin at annihilate, -ion

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Explanation

Annihilation is the total destruction of something. In World War II, our nuclear bombs resulted in the annihilation of Hiroshima. If you spill milk on your textbooks, it won’t result in annihilation — this word is much more serious. After an annihilation, there's nothing left but total, horrific destruction, like a wild fire completely wiping out a forest or a tsunami sweeping away a seaside town. This word has an end-of-the-world feel to it: many religions have stories of annihilation of some sort, resulting in the end of everything.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

annihilation annihilations

The vision of a utopian domestic future took a strange turn during the Cold War, marrying the breathless excitement of the space age with the existential dread of nuclear annihilation.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 7, 2026

"The nuclear annihilation of an American city is no laughing matter," Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader in the US House of Representatives, said on X.

From Barron's ● Oct. 6, 2026

On Friday Araghchi said Iran did not accept "coercion, threats or intimidation" and added that "peace cannot be built through threats of annihilation".

From BBC ● Sep. 25, 2026

On his X account, he put the odds of annihilation above 10%.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 12, 2026

The days stand like angels in blue and gold, incomprehensible, above the ring of annihilation.

From "All Quiet on the Western Front: A Novel" by Erich Maria Remarque

"For a given mass, such annihilations are the densest form of energy release that we know of," Fajans added.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 27, 2023

Around the galaxies, moats of empty space would open that would prevent matter-antimatter annihilations and, oddly, mimic dark matter dynamically.

From Science Magazine ● Sep. 27, 2023

Dark matter annihilations could raise the temperature of a planet 14 times as massive as Jupiter from 250 K to 500 K or more, the researchers estimate.

From Science Magazine ● Mar. 26, 2021

Similar annihilations occur for other combinations of a particle with its antiparticle, sometimes producing more particles while obeying all conservation laws.

From Textbooks ● Aug. 12, 2015

He rejected the notion that animals and plants suffered sudden annihilations, and believed that all the principal animal groups–mammals, reptiles, fish, and so on–had coexisted since the dawn of time.

From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson

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