exterminate
Americanverb (used with object)
-
exterminates,
present (3rd person singular)
-
exterminated,
past participle, past
-
exterminating
present participle
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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exterminationnoun
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exterminatornoun
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nonexterminationnoun
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self-exterminationnoun
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exterminableadjective
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exterminativeadjective
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unexterminableadjective
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unexterminatedadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
exterminatesimple
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exterminatessimple
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have exterminatedperfect
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has exterminatedperfect
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am exterminatingprogressive
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are exterminatingprogressive
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is exterminatingprogressive
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have been exterminatingperfect progressive
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has been exterminatingperfect progressive
Past
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exterminatedsimple
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had exterminatedperfect
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was exterminatingprogressive
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were exterminatingprogressive
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had been exterminatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of exterminate
1535–45; < Latin exterminātus, past participle of extermināre to extermine; see -ate 1
Explanation
If your house becomes infested with cockroaches, mice, or even ants, you might have to exterminate them. It is certainly not a pleasant process, but often quite necessary. To exterminate means "to kill off or destroy completely." Notice that it includes the word terminate which means, “to end.” It is usually used in reference to insects or rodents, but also unfortunately in reference to people or groups of people. It is just a coincidence that this verb shares a syllable with termite — a bug that often has to be exterminated before it eats through the wood of your home.
Vocabulary lists containing exterminate
"The Devil and Tom Walker" by Washington Irving
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Persepolis
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Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
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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:
If people exterminate hives, native pollinators such as monarch butterflies, bumblebees, wasps and more can also be affected by the insecticides used.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 29, 2026
In 17th century Ireland, Robyn Goodfellowe is an apprentice hunter who follows her father when he’s called in to exterminate wolves.
From Salon ● Dec. 24, 2025
A woman who accidentally killed an 11-year-old neighbour with poisonous gas she used to exterminate bedbugs has been spared jail by a judge at the Old Bailey.
From BBC ● Jul. 18, 2024
Mr. Biden will travel to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to deliver the keynote address of the Holocaust museum’s yearly event and remember the Nazi effort to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe.
From New York Times ● May 1, 2024
To extirpate is to exterminate or destroy a living entity or group so completely that it ceases to exist forever.
From "An Indigenous People’s History of the United States" by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
While she has been seemingly ruthless in her job as a sniper who exterminates the game players who fail, she also has sympathy for Gyeong-seok, having left behind a daughter of her own up North.
From Salon ● Dec. 29, 2024
If some chance event exterminates them—for example the glaciers freezing fast onto their beds—then the likelihood of new animals making it in from the outside to recolonize the lakes afterward is extremely low.
From Scientific American ● Feb. 3, 2015
In the dawn of consciousness, the new race, Homo sapiens, exterminates the Neanderthal men, demonstrating the author's point that history moves in blind ways.
From Time Magazine Archive
The Inheritors, by William Golding In the dawn of consciousness, the new race, Homo sapiens, exterminates the Neander thal men, demonstrating the author's point that history moves in blind ways.
From Time Magazine Archive
When thy troops thus rushed against him, Bhima of furious impetuosity displayed all his vim like Destroyer himself armed with a mace when he burns and exterminates all creatures at the end of the Yuga.
From The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
Within about 50 years, the crocodiles had been completely exterminated.
From Science Daily ● May 28, 2026
Along with the passenger pigeon we exterminated the great auk, the Carolina parakeet, the Labrador duck and the ivory-billed woodpecker.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 23, 2026
Over time, beekeepers have kept hives that are more docile and exterminated bees that show aggressive tendencies in an effort to keep the majority of wild bees calm.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 14, 2024
Gray wolves were exterminated across most of the U.S. by the 1930s under government-sponsored poisoning and trapping campaigns.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 12, 2023
There is an old piece of wisdom in biohazard work that goes like this: you can never know when life is exterminated.
From "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston
There are also conflicting views of the cost of exterminating so many owls.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 19, 2025
Liias — who is a self-proclaimed pollinator champion — recently sponsored Senate Bill 5972 to restrict neonicotinoids, or a particularly harmful class of pesticides that kill indiscriminately, exterminating not only pests but also countless pollinators.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 23, 2024
"The Daleks are essentially the Nazis transformed into robots with a stiff-armed salute and insistence on exterminating the human race and all other races," said Turner.
From BBC ● Nov. 19, 2023
His father had an exterminating business, but George chose a different path.
From New York Times ● Mar. 23, 2022
Compared to its brethren around the world, Clovis society, with its putative focus on massive, exterminating hunts, would have been an anomaly.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
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.
