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
When we updated the exterminator, he canceled the appointment.
From New York Times ● Apr. 30, 2024
He didn’t pursue acting full time until he was in his 40s, working for a time as an exterminator.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 24, 2023
I ran past the gym doors—“Can’t you go any faster?” from Coach Quatrini—and out into the parking lot, where the exterminator truck had pulled up to unload Sycorax and Caliban into their new cage.
From "The Wednesday Wars" by Gary D. Schmidt
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
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
But she also represents their best chance of survival and moving where this domesticated breed belongs: inside homes, away from cars, cats, hawks, Florida heat and possibly government-hired exterminators.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 16, 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
“All right. If you think I’m being unfair about the exterminators, we’ll both pay for it.”
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.
