wipe out
Britishverb
-
(tr) to destroy completely; eradicate
-
informal (tr) to murder or kill
-
(intr) to fall or jump off a surfboard or skateboard
noun
-
an act or instance of wiping out
-
the interference of one radio signal by another so that reception is impossible
-
Destroy, as in The large chains are wiping out the independent bookstores . Originally put simply as wipe , the idiom acquired out in the first half of the 1800s.
-
Kill; also, murder. For example, The entire crew was wiped out in the plane crash , or The gangsters threatened to wipe him and his family out . [Late 1800s]
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.
But critics have called this unachievable, and the author of the report his savings estimate was based on has since warned it could be wiped out by rising electricity costs.
From BBC
Changes to council tax rules are like a "disease" that risk "wiping out tourism in Wales," an industry body has claimed.
From BBC
A deep-water fish called coelacanth similarly survived the mass extinction that wiped out all the dinosaurs that did not evolve into birds, he pointed out.
From Barron's
Each stop is tiny, so one winning trade wipes out those small losses.
From MarketWatch
After $96 billion of U.S. healthcare market capitalization was wiped out Tuesday, European pharmaceutical stocks fall, too.
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.
