destroy

verb

1)

their offices were destroyed by bombing

Syn:

demolish, knock down, level, raze (to the ground), fell; wreck, ruin, shatter; blast, blow up, dynamite, explode, bomb

Ant:

build, reconstruct

2)

the new highway would destroy the conservation area

Syn:

spoil, ruin, wreck, disfigure, blight, mar, impair, deface, scar, injure, harm, devastate, damage, wreak havoc on; informal total

Ant:

restore, preserve

3)

illness destroyed his career

Syn:

wreck, ruin, spoil, disrupt, undo, upset, put an end to, put a stop to, terminate, frustrate, blight, crush, quash, dash, scotch; devastate, demolish, scuttle, sabotage; informal mess up, foul up, put the kibosh on, fry, do for, blow a hole in; archaic bring to naught

Ant:

bolster, help

4)

the horse had to be destroyed

Syn:

kill, put down, put to sleep, slaughter, terminate, exterminate, euthanize

5)

we will destroy the enemy

Syn:

annihilate, wipe out, obliterate, wipe off the face of the earth, eliminate, eradicate, liquidate, finish off, erase; kill, slaughter, massacre, exterminate; informal take out, rub out, snuff out, waste, fry, nuke, zap

Ant:

spare

••

destroy, annihilate, demolish, eradicate, exterminate, extirpate, raze

If you're interested in getting rid of something, you've got a number of options at your disposal. Destroy is a general term covering any force that wrecks, ruins, kills, etc. (to destroy an ant hill by pouring boiling water on it). If it's a building, you'll want to demolish or raze it, two words that are generally applied only to very large things. Raze is used almost exclusively with structures; it means to bring something down to the level of the ground (they razed the apartment building to make way for the new hospital). Demolish implies pulling or smashing something to pieces; when used with regard to buildings, it conjures up a vision of complete wreckage and often a heap of rubble (their new house was demolished by the first hurricane of the season). But unlike raze, demolish can also be applied to nonmaterial things (to demolish the theory with a few simple experiments). If you eradicate something, you eliminate it completely, literally or figuratively, pull it out by the roots (to eradicate smallpox with a vaccine) and prevent its reappearance. Extirpate, like eradicate, implies the utter destruction of something (the species was extirpated from the park by the flooding). If you're dealing with cockroaches, you'll probably want to exterminate them, which means to wipe out or kill in great numbers. Or better yet, you'll want to annihilate them, which is the most extreme word in this group and literally means to reduce to nothingness.