exterminator
Americannoun
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exterminators
plural
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a person or thing that exterminates.
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a person or business establishment specializing in the elimination of vermin, insects, etc., from a building, apartment, etc., especially by the controlled application of toxic chemicals.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of exterminator
From the Late Latin word exterminātor, dating back to 1605–15. See extermine, -ator
Vocabulary lists containing exterminator
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:
One is the Jewish son of an exterminator who rose to Harvard; the other the cerebral product of a striving Black middle class.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 27, 2025
“Bees are still wild animals” but nothing to call an exterminator for, Durboraw said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 14, 2024
A man posing as a pest exterminator tried to gain access to a San Diego hotel that operates as a shelter for migrant families.
From New York Times ● Jun. 2, 2024
While the war on rats has no end in sight, the exterminator Edwards said we can learn a lot from their resilience.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 13, 2024
Another pawned her sewing machine and summoned an exterminator.
From "Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri
The association added that when hotels encounter bedbugs, guests are relocated and exterminators are called, in accordance with health and safety guidelines.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 20, 2024
In the game description, it says players - who take on the roles of exterminators - are tasked with treating "mysterious infestations caused by twisted versions of classic characters and urban legends".
From BBC ● Jan. 2, 2024
Germany survived, grew, thrived; Germans carried on; the world had little use for those who wished to dwell on the extermination of European Jews, or for how to deal with the exterminators themselves.
From Slate ● Nov. 30, 2023
Witchers are this world's exterminators except the vermin they hunt are deadly creatures from another sphere of existence.
From Salon ● Jul. 8, 2023
That morning, before we picked my mother up, he had said, “You should pay for the exterminators, because Mirugai is your cat and so they’re your fleas. It’s only fair.”
From "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan
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.
