annihilate means to reduce to nothing, to destroy, to eradicate. It carries an Arena rating of 1632, earned across 3 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, annihilate ranks #131 of 17,124 for Most Sublime Words, #642 of 17,131 for Scariest Words, #1,071 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #2,399 of 17,142 for Most Ingenious Words.
annihilate is pronounced /əˈnaɪ.ə.leɪt/.
Why “annihilate” is a great word
To reduce something utterly to nothing, erasing all trace of its existence. From Latin annihilatus, past participle of annihilare ("to reduce to nothing"), from ad ("to") + nihil ("nothing"), first recorded in English c. 1520s. Unlike "destroy," which permits rubble and memory, or "create," its absolute conceptual inverse, to annihilate is to enact a perfect, negative miracle. It is the erasure of a city not into ruins but into flat, featureless dust; the dissolution of a thought so completely that not even the ghost of the idea remains; the silence after a star's collapse, where light and matter are canceled into void—the purest victory of oblivion over being.
Etymology
Borrowed from Latin annihilātus, perfect passive participle of annihilō (“to reduce to nothing”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix)), from ad (“to”) + nihil (“nothing”) + -ō (verb-forming suffix). See also an-.
verb
- To reduce to nothing, to destroy, to eradicate.e.g.“An atom bomb can annihilate a whole city.”
- To react with antimatter, producing gamma radiation and (for higher-mass reactants, especially composite particles such as protons) lighter particles (such as pions, muons, and neutrinos).
- To treat as worthless, to vilify.e.g.“of all the opinions which Antiquity hath had of men in gross, those which I most willingly embrace, and whereon I take most hold, are such as most vilifie, condemne, and annihilate us.” — 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 17, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC:
- To render null and void; to abrogate.
- To cause to become zero by means of an annihilator operator.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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