annihilate

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English annichilat, also adnichilat, first a past participle used as an adjective,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Late Latin annihilātus (“reduced to nothing”),^[5][4][6] from annihilō (“to reduce to nothing”), also adnihilō,^[7][2] from Latin ad- (“to”) and nihil (“nothing”).^[7][6][8] The Latin verb is recorded from the 4th or 5th century, in Jerome.^[7][9] That Latin noun is from ne- (“not”), from Proto-Indo-European *ne- (“not”), and hilum (“small thing, trifle”), of unknown origin,^[8] and it is also the source of nil and nihilism.^[10][11] The OED takes the verb, recorded from 1525, from the participial stem of the Latin verb,^[7][5] while Barnhart makes it a verb use of the Middle English participle, perhaps under the influence of Middle French annihiler.^[3] Etymonline allows Old French anichiler (“to annihilate, destroy”) as a source of the participle.^[8] An earlier English verb, annihil, from French, did not survive the arrival of annihilate.^[10][12] The OED compares Italian annichilare, recorded before 1306, and Spanish anihilar.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Reduced to nothing, as an adjective: about 1400, in a work of J. Wyclif, Adnichilat or brouȝt to nouȝt.^[2][7] The Middle English Dictionary dates the text's composition to 1389,^[2] and Etymonline dates the adjective to the late 14th century.^[8] The verb's first sense, in 1525, was different: to annul a law, treaty or right, in Lord Berners's translation of Froissart.^[7]

Semantic evolution

The Latin verb itself had already moved from destroying to annulling, a sense frequent in British sources from the 11th century, and to invalidating and making light of something.^[7] English took up the annulling and slighting senses first: the verb meant to annul from 1525 and to treat as worthless from 1542,^[7] and only from 1567 to reduce a person or thing to nothing,^[7] the sense that later became the main one; the Oxford Dictionary of English dates "destroy utterly" to the mid-16th century.^[4] Johnson (1755) gave "to reduce to nothing; to put out of existence" first, and quoted Bacon on the omnipotence needed to turn something into nothing.^[13] From 1610 it could also mean to break the power of a person or dynasty, and in 1757 it is used of destroying the strength of a body as a unit.^[7] Weakened uses followed: to consume all of a quantity of food (1815), to put down a person (1881) and to beat an opponent in sport (1886).^[7] In the 20th century, physics gave it a technical sense, converting matter into energy (1916), and then, of a subatomic particle meeting its antiparticle (1939), an intransitive one.^[7] The adjective was replaced by annihilated, and the OED's last record of it is from 1890.^[7]

Timeline

• c. 1400 – adjective, reduced to nothing, adnichilat.^[7][2]
• 1525 – verb, to annul or revoke a law, treaty or right.^[7][3]
• 1542 – verb, to treat as worthless.^[7]
• 1567 – verb, to reduce to nothing, to destroy utterly.^[7]
• 1610 – verb, to break the authority of a person or regime.^[7]
• 1815 – verb, to eat or drink all of something.^[7]
• 1881 – verb, to put down or humiliate a person.^[7]
• 1886 – verb, to defeat decisively in sport.^[7]
• 1916 – verb, to convert matter into energy.^[7]
• 1939 – verb, of a subatomic particle, to undergo annihilation.^[7]

Meanings

Verb

1. To destroy completely; to wipe out of existence: The bombing annihilated the old town.^[14][5][7]
2. To destroy the strength or force of something: Fear annihilated his resolve.^[5][7]
3. (informal) To defeat totally, as in a game or an argument.^[14][7]
4. (physics) Of a subatomic particle, to combine with its antiparticle so that the mass of both becomes energy.^[14][7]
5. (archaic) To annul or make void a law, treaty or right.^[9][7][5]
6. (rare) To treat as worthless or nonexistent.^[7][5]

Adjective

1. (archaic) Annihilated.^[5][7][9]

Word family

• annihilability
• annihilator
• annihilation
• annihilatory

Related words

• annihilative
• annihilable
• nihilism
• nil
• nihil

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
11. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
13. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
14. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins