DESTROY • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Destroy

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/dɪstrˈɔɪ/ Listen

verb

Destroy v. t. (past & past part. destroyed; pres. part. destroying)

To unbuild; to pull or tear down; to separate virulently into its constituent parts; to break up the structure and organic existence of; to demolish. "But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves."

To ruin; to bring to naught; to put an end to; to annihilate; to consume. "I will utterly pluck up and destroy that nation."

To put an end to the existence, prosperity, or beauty of; to kill. "If him by force he can destroy, or, worse, By some false guile pervert."

Synonyms: To demolish; lay waste; consume; raze; dismantle; ruin; throw down; overthrow; subvert; desolate; devastate; deface; extirpate; extinguish; kill; slay. See Demolish.

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Etymology of 'Destroy'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Destroy" Quotes from Famous Books

... instance, was needed to destroy the legend of the cuckoo, incessantly repeated down to the days of Xavier Raspail, and to us so familiar; to elucidate its history, and to set it ...

— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... beauty of sentiment, that no one ever recollected the offence, except to rejoice in its consequences. He repented just as certainly, however, if he had been led to praise any person or thing by accident more than he thought it deserved; and was on such occasions comically earnest to destroy the praise or pleasure ...

— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... culture. It became hostile to Greek and Latin literature and art and sought to repress them. In the rise of new languages and literature in new nationalities every attempt was made by the church to destroy the effects of the pagan life. The poems and sagas treating of the religion and mythologies of these young, rising nationalities were destroyed. The monuments of the first beginnings of literature, the products of a period so hard to compass by the historian, were served in the same way as were ...

— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... no captain, much less fiery old Bluecher, without an absolute forfeiture of his reputation as a soldier could afford to leave his van unsupported, but that the Prussian Field Marshal must advance to its support. If the Emperor's plans worked out, he could destroy that van, and then turn back and mete out the same fate to the main body coming to ...

— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... pogos as certain small gray birds, very similar to the sparrows in Spain. They are very greedy, and if undisturbed would totally destroy the rice-fields. Their scientific ...

— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair

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