Extermination

noun

noun ·5 syllables ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The act of exterminating; total destruction or eradication. countable, uncountable

    "extermination of error or vice"

  2. 2
    the act of exterminating wordnet
  3. 3
    Elimination. countable, uncountable
  4. 4
    complete annihilation wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
extinctionabolishmentabolitionannihilationannulmentbane

Example

More examples

""Arbeit macht frei", meaning "Work sets you free", is a slogan placed, during the Holocaust, over the entrance to the Auschwitz extermination camp."

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French extermination, itself a learned borrowing from Ecclesiastical Latin exterminātiō.

Related phrases

extermination campbegins exfinal killingkill pestskilling bugslike holocaustpest controlwipe out

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.