exterminate

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin exterminātus (“driven out”),^[2][3][4][5] the past participle of exterminō (“to drive beyond the boundaries, drive out”),^[6][3][2][7] with -ate.^[2][8] Most dictionaries analyse the Latin verb as ex- (“out”) and terminus (“boundary”),^{[6][4][9][10][8]} while Etymonline and Barnhart derive it from a phrase meaning beyond the boundary, ex (“out of”) with the ablative of termen (“boundary, limit, end”).^[3][2] Barnhart adds that in some uses the English verb may be a back-formation from exterminacioun, recorded 1459,^[2] and that it gradually replaced extermine, recorded 1459, from Middle French exterminer, which became obsolete during the 17th century.^[2][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

To drive out or banish from the boundaries of a place or community: 1541, in Thomas Elyot's The Image of Governance.^[6][2][4] Etymonline has the same sense from the 1540s and Dictionary.com 1535–45.^[3][5] The Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English date the word to late Middle English instead.^[8][11]

Semantic evolution

The strengthening to the modern sense began in Latin: the OED notes that only "drive out" is found in classical Latin, and that "destroy" appears in the Vulgate and in French;^[6][8] Etymonline and Barnhart assign it to Late Latin too.^[3][2] Weekley compares this strengthening with decimate.^[12] In English, "destroy utterly" is first recorded in the 1649 translation of the Koran, which Barnhart says was made from the French;^[6][2] the Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English date it earlier, to the mid 16th century.^[8][11] Extermine had carried this sense since the mid 15th century.^[3] The verb also meant to abolish a thing (1605–1794)^[6][8] and, in mathematics, to eliminate an unknown quantity (1743–1827),^[6][8] and the older "banish" lasted until 1692.^[6] Johnson (1755) still ran the senses together as "to root out; to tear up; to drive away; to abolish; to destroy".^[13] Weekley found the old sense alive in a heckler's question at Dumfries on 9 December 1918: "Are you in favour of exterminating every German out of this country?"^[12] The application to pests and vermin is the one Collins now gives first.^[14]

Timeline

• 1541 – to drive out, banish (obsolete by 1692).^[6][2]
• 1605 – to get rid of a thing, abolish (obsolete by 1794).^[6]
• 1649 – to destroy utterly, kill off persons or animals, and later to root out species, sects or opinions.^[6][2] Etymonline dates this to the 1640s.^[3]
• 1743 – in mathematics, to eliminate an unknown quantity (obsolete by 1827).^[6]

Meanings

Verb

1. To destroy completely, especially living things such as pests or vermin: The farmer hired a firm to exterminate the mice in the barn.^[14][4][6]
2. To put an end to; to root out, eradicate or extirpate a population, sect or opinion.^[4][6]
3. (obsolete, 1541–1692) To drive out of the boundaries of a place; to banish or expel.^[6][4][8]
4. (obsolete, 1743–1827) In mathematics, to eliminate an unknown quantity.^[6][8]

Word family

• extermination
• exterminator
• exterminatory

Related words

• terminate
• termination
• terminator
• terminus
• term
• extermine

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
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 Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins