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
The department also said that its own inspection this week did not reveal any black worms, and that the jail maintains a contract with an exterminator.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 5, 2024
My husband called an exterminator, who agreed to come the next morning.
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
“My lawyer tells me that the exterminator is required by law to either post a guard or to arrange for guards to patrol around the houses that are tented.”
From "Tangerine" by Edward Bloor
After taking a suggestion from the audience, Jordan Black and Roy Jenkins begin an improvised scene in which they are playing two exterminators whose jobs are their identity.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 23, 2026
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
The project's 36-strong team has turned amateur rat-catchers into proper exterminators.
From BBC ● Jun. 26, 2023
However, the recent development of resistance to these insecticides confronts the exterminators with the problem of where to go next.
From "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson
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.
