Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To pull up by the roots.
- v. To destroy totally; exterminate. See Synonyms at abolish.
- v. To remove by surgery.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To pull up by the roots; root out; eradicate; get rid of; expel; destroy totally: as, to extirpate weeds or noxious plants from a field; to extirpate cancer or a tumor; to extirpate a sect; to extirpate error or heresy.
- Synonyms To uproot, exterminate, abolish, annihilate.
Wiktionary
- v. transitive, obsolete To clear an area of roots and stumps.
- v. transitive To pull up by the roots; uproot.
- v. transitive To destroy completely; to annihilate.
- v. transitive To surgically remove.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To pluck up by the stem or root; to root out; to eradicate, literally or figuratively; to destroy wholly
WordNet 3.0
- v. destroy completely, as if down to the roots
- v. surgically remove (an organ)
- v. pull up by or as if by the roots
Etymologies
- From Latin exstirpō ("uproot"), from ex- ("out of") + stirps ("the lower part of the trunk of a tree, including the roots; the stem, stalk") (Wiktionary)
- Latin exstirpāre, exstirpāt- : ex-, ex- + stirps, root. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The English colonists were thus fulfilling their responsibility to protect as they proceeded to "extirpate" and "exterminate" the natives, in their words -- and for their own good, their honored successors explained.”
“And the single best example of that external control was the attempt to limit – and implicitly, extirpate – chattel slavery.”
“Alma's mission is to extirpate the black rats and other non-native species that are overrunning the islands, and Dave is bent on stopping the slaughter.”
The Wall Street Journal: First the Settlers, Then the Settled
“Perhaps some truly believe society must be arranged to extirpate any sign of differences between groups.”
The Wall Street Journal: Racism Is Everywhere . . . Statistically
“Indeed, Jefferson's writings on Indians are filled with the straightforward assertion that the natives are to be given a simple choice - to be "extirpate [d] from the earth" or to remove themselves out of the Americans 'way.”
New World Apocalypse, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
“The many weeds in the lawn revealed a deep personality difference: Dad, as an impatient mechanical engineer, liked the instant solution of digging them up one by one from close enough to extirpate all the roots.”
“He was pleased that God had promoted the true faith “so honorably” and that the French monarchy had been able to “extirpate the poisonous roots with such prudence.””
“Well, it seems that lobbies have been able to extirpate themselves from this embarrassing regulation.”
The Huffington Post: Valerie Orsoni: Too Much Calorie Info Will Fatten America Up
“He had to go because he represented a strain of prejudice that has infected his party for decades, despite the best efforts of decent Republicans to extirpate it.”
“Then it announced that it had had it all along – this was the moment when Ratzinger decided he must extirpate child abuse from the church.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘extirpate’.
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allover
reintegrate, spight, surveillant, harmonize, Colophon, workplace, bigoted, unsighted, bridgework, salutation, voltmeter, octane and 159 more...
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GRE Barron's 800
abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abject, abjure, abscission, abscond, abstemious, abstinence, abysmal, accretion and 787 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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From reading
Collected from reading
venerate, reprobate, reticent, adoration, ethereal, ephemeral, equivocal, contumacious, heinous, solicitous, agnostic, aberration and 335 more...
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Jesse's random
bathos, dragoman, tessellated, escutcheon, eikon, mondaine, basilisk, ciborium, rubric, machicolation, jet, defalcation and 198 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2053 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Quacksalvers et al. Nostrum
Bring forth the cathartic illumination on malignant,maniacal,medical,menage a trios and more egotists stymie
culpability, piousfraud, capacitous, rhabdomyolysis, scapula, idiosyncrasy, quiescent, malignant, nefarious, sociological, sociopath, pathogen and 204 more...
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cicatrix
scar tissue
minatory, naira, Cluniac, embracive, prolix, hierophant, timorous, adduce, veracious, dysphoric, sang-froid, vitiate and 503 more...
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Philosophic , etymology
every major discipline has uniquely developed esoteric nomenclature to facilitate interdisciplinary dissemination
quale , qualia, elegy, tacet, lexicon, annunciate, caste, eros, contrive, purlicue, irony, venacular, dilapidate and 569 more...
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Ballardian
All things descriptive from JG
Ballardoperation mindfuck, pataphysics, wahrheitssensible..., polymorphism, postprandial, covalent, stygian, lucus a non lucendo, kafkaesque, leitmotif, fugacious, ablate and 81 more...
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GRE Study guide
Going through the Magoosh website, words I pulled from the verbal section. 2012.
magnanimous, correlate, anglicized, simulacrum, tantamount, obsequiousness, subterfuge, vehement, vociferous, benign, concomitant, veracity and 83 more...
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Burroughs
Detestable words
purulence, bête noire, exigent, exculpate, desideratum, lucriferous, concomitant, pertinacious, pervicacious, gemütlichkeit, sublimate, sanfroid and 39 more...
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Misanthropic
Lovecraft, Lovecraftian, bete noire
Lovecraftian, bête noire, festinate, hathos, misogynist, foredoom, decorticate, malingerer, nemophilist, mendicant, pendragon, stultify and 33 more...
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Vocab
goat rodeo, fardel, quotidian, deportment, opprobrium, deracinated, inculcate, desultory, orotund, chivvy, diktat, casuistry and 30 more...
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try to use now and then
exacerbate, inveterate, obviate, verbose, exasperate, disingenuous, squit, ingenue, Opiate, opioid, revile, decrepit and 14 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for extirpate.
rolig "At the same time white settlements were growing, of fascinatingly different character, from Canada with its fractious French, to Australia and its origins as a huge prison camp, to the model colony of New Zealand with its sturdy free farmers. In each case, the creation of what would one day be prosperous liberal democracies involved the expropriation and sometimes the extirpation of the indigenous inhabitants, a process openly welcomed by some intelligent and supposedly enlightened Englishmen in the name of progress."
– Geoffrey Wheatcroft, "Little Britain" (review of The Decline and Fall of the British Empire 1781–1997, by Piers Brendon), New York Times (21 Nov 2008). Nov 22, 2008