Showing results for "obliterated"

• past tense form of obliterate.
• past participle of obliterate.

obliterated

American  

[uh-blit-uh-ray-tid] / əˈblɪt əˌreɪ tɪd /

adjective

1. completely destroyed or done away with, so that little or no trace remains.

   I stood amid the rubble of obliterated buildings, where not even a feral cat was to be seen.

   Removing the brain tumor left him with an obliterated memory of the last 15 years.

2. blotted out completely so that it cannot be read or discerned.

   He was arrested for possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number.

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verb

1. the simple past tense and past participle of obliterate.

Other Word Forms

• half-obliterated
  adjective
• unobliterated
  adjective

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Etymology

Origin of obliterated

First recorded in 1605–15; obliterate ( def. ) + -ed ² ( def. ) for the adjective senses; obliterate ( def. ) + -ed ¹ ( def. ) for the verb sense

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Explanation

Something that's obliterated is gone. If your dreams of becoming a trapeze artist are completely obliterated after your first two difficult weeks at circus school, maybe you can switch to clowning. Obliterated comes from the Latin phrase literas scribere, meaning strike or cross out letters. When something is obliterated, it disappears or is so damaged, you can barely recognize it. It might be literally wiped out, like a house obliterated by fire, or figuratively destroyed, like your obliterated hopes of marrying your favorite movie star someday.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

obliterated

The village of Dhunge, once home to roughly 150 families, now lies in ruins, reduced to a swampy expanse with an ominous rotting stench -- one of dozens of settlements obliterated by the Himalayan floods.

From Barron's ● Aug. 30, 2026

Any hope Infantino might have had of tiptoeing away from the scene of his World Cup private-investment wreckage having sustained only minor damage to his reputation has been obliterated.

From BBC ● Aug. 1, 2026

Morishita was born in Hiroshima in 1948, three years after the city was obliterated by an atomic bomb.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 22, 2026

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush — a man whose own presidential campaign was obliterated by a reality TV host — called a Pratt campaign video “maybe the best political ad of the year.”

From Salon ● May 18, 2026

But for the most part, these traces were obliterated, with the hedges running wild and native trees—slippery elm and tamarack—outnumbering the quince and Japanese maple.

From "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt

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