Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The intentional, usually remote-controlled destruction of a space vehicle, rocket, or missile after launching, as for defective performance or reasons of safety.
- v. To destroy intentionally (a rocket or missile) after launch.
- v. To self-destruct.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To destroy.
Wiktionary
- v. transitive To intentionally cause the destruction of.
- v. intransitive To self-destruct.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. obsolete To destroy.
WordNet 3.0
- v. destroy (one's own missile or rocket)
- v. do away with, cause the destruction or undoing of
Etymologies
- Back-formation from destruction. (Wiktionary)
- Back-formation from destruction. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The GOP's ability to self destruct is breath taking and a pleasurre to watch.”
“The key to survivable abort from an SRM destruct is to get the Orion outside of the 'hot zone' with margin to spare.”
“Why an out-of-power party would choose to unilaterally self-destruct is beyond me.”
“What I can’t wait to see, as the US middle class continues to self destruct, is all these poor “lazy” white people who’ll end up on the dole (or need of, but it’ll be gone) and face the same lack of sympathy.”
“Hearing Chip admit he’s fuelling Colin’s ego for an inevitable self-destruct is great and makes me pull even more for that team.”
“Yeah, no one really gets the loses until they are taken away - if you had them taken from you all in one day, you were stripped of them, employment, activities, everything, you would likely self destruct which is why it seems to be a slow and self eating process.”
“Jane B. said, "Would the abuse of destroyed as 'destruct' come from”
“I used to joke that Fortune 500 companies can spend well over $250 million dollars on building a world-class brand, only to hand their social media presence over to "an intern for the summer," and watch it destruct in a matter of weeks.”
The Huffington Post: Beverly Macy: Is Your Company Smart Enough for Social Media?
“It should be standard practice to build some form of self destruct sequence into the buildings and equipment in suspect countries.”
“Replicator broke up six to seven months ahead of time, setting the self destruct for a final show that co-incided as a release of the final written material.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘destruct’.
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WF - list of EN back-formations
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_back-formations
aborigine, accrete, acculturate, admix, admixture, adolesce, adsorb, adulate, advect, aesthete, air-condition, anticline and 212 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Baby Got Back-Formations
"A new word created by removing an affix from an already existing word, as vacuum clean from vacuum cleaner, or by removing what is mistakenly thought to be an affix, as pea from the earlier Englis...
resurrect, enthuse, couth, donate, emote, greed, isolate, manipulate, orate, prequel, spectate, upholster and 94 more...
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love
love love love
sleepless, dreams, restless, heartache, liebe, feelings, thoughts, death, lifeless, sad, sadness, pain and 45 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for destruct.

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