do away with
do away with verb: to abolish; to put an end to; to eliminate.
Verb
do away with (third-person singular simple present does away with, present participle doing away with, simple past did away with, past participle done away with)
- To abolish; to put an end to; to eliminate.
- She tried to do away with the argument by changing the topic.
- The criminals tried to do away with the evidence before the police arrived.
- Synonyms:
- expunge
- To have someone killed.
- He plotted to do away with his rival.
- […]unless we can begin to understand that the vast majority of those who do away with themselves—and of those who attempt to do so—do not do it because of any frailty, and rarely out of impulse, but because they are in the grip of an illness that causes almost unimaginable pain.1988 December 19, William Styron, “Why Primo Levi Need Not Have Died”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
do away with meaning in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Persian
do away with in Telugu
- to do away with, abolish, annihilate
- మాయించు māyiñcu
- to do away with, cure, avert, dissipate
- నివారించు nivāriñcu
- to do away with, set aside, dismiss
- తోసివేయు tōsivēyu
- to do away with, to remove
- పోగొట్టు pōgoṭṭu
do away with in Malayalam
- get rid of, abolish, discard
- ഇല്ലായ്മ ചെയ്യുക, ഇല്ലാതാക്കുക, വിരാമമിടുക, നിർത്തലാക്കുക, ഒഴിവാക്കുക, തള്ളിക്കളയുക
- kill, prey, quarry
- കൊല്ലുക, ഇര, ഇരയായ ജീവി, ഇരജന്തു, പീഡിതമൃഗം, ചൂണ്ടയിൽ കൊത്തിയ ഇര
do away with in Persian
- abolish; put an end to
- منسوخ کردن mansux kardan
Examples of do away with in a sentence
- She’s working hard to do away with negative thinking.
- For no nearness in space, no closeness of relations, no daily intimacy, can do away with the inexorable laws which give the adept his seclusion.1887, Mabel Collins, The Illuminated Way: A Guide to Newophytes, 1903 ed., Yogi publications, New Jersey, p. 35
- Using electricity as motive power for railroads will do away with fuel trains, tenders, coal handling, water, and all that.1922, Victor Appleton, chapter 7, in Tom Swift And His Electric Locomotive:
- So much so that parents are suspicious when schools do away with homework.2008 September 30, “Editorial: British schools' move towards scrapping homework is a progressive idea”, in Times of India:
Synonyms of do away with
Forms of do away with
| third-person singular present | does away with |
|---|---|
| present participle | doing away with |
| past | did away with |
| past participle | done away with |
Origin of do away with
Very likely a continuation of Old English onweġ dōn (“to get rid of”, literally “to do away”, from onweġ (“away”) and dōn (“to do”, also “to make, cause, put”)), via a Middle English *awey don, *oway don, *don awey, and other forms. The preposition with was probably also already in use from the outset, given how its original meaning is “against” (still seen in e.g. argue with, withstand and have a fight with). The original meaning of the phrase was therefore on the lines of “to put away against (someone or something)” or “to make/cause (s.o./sth. to go) away”, which are long-obsolete senses of do.
Questions about do away with
- What does do away with mean?
- Do away with means to abolish; to put an end to; to eliminate.
- What is do away with in Tamil?
- Do away with in Tamil is காய். See Do away with meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use do away with in a sentence?
- She’s working hard to do away with negative thinking.
- What part of speech is do away with?
- Do away with is a verb.
- What is the past tense of do away with?
- The past tense of do away with is did away with.
Words near do away with in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: do away with (page history and authors); do away with (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); తోసివేయు (Telugu) (page history and authors); do away with (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-do away with.ogg.
Cite this entry: “do away with.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/do_away_with. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.