extirpate
Syllables: ex·tir·pateUK/ˈɛkstəpeɪt//ˈɛkstɚpeɪt/
extirpate verb: to clear an area of roots and stumps.
Verb
extirpate (third-person singular simple present extirpates, present participle extirpating, simple past and past participle extirpated)
- To clear an area of roots and stumps.
- To pull up by the roots; uproot.
- Synonyms:
- uproot, eradicate, extricate, deracinate
- To destroy completely; to annihilate.
- But you are not Hercules; nor able to extirpate the Evils of others: nor even Theſeus, to extirpate the Evils of Attica. Extirpate your own then.1758, Epictetus, translated by Elizabeth Carter, All the Works of Epictetus Which are Now Extant; Consisting of His Discourses, Preserved by Arrian, in Four Books, the Enchiridion, and Fragments, The...
- The simple object was to expel the natives, and to extirpate the Catholic religion.1870, M[ary] F[rances] Cusack, chapter XIX, in The Student's Manual of Irish History, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC, page 309
- Synonyms:
- annihilate, destroy, eradicate, exterminate, aerosolize, atomize, benothing, bewreck, blot out, blotto
- To cause a population to go extinct in a particular region, but not across the entire range of the species or subspecies.
- The cougar was extirpated across nearly all of its eastern North American range in the two centuries after European colonization.
- To surgically remove.
- Synonyms:
- excise
Adjective
extirpate (comparative more extirpate, superlative most extirpate)
- Extirpated
- It is profitable […] to haue all occasions of sedicion […] to be extirpate.1541, Thomas Elyot, Image of Governance
- Rooted out, extinct, utterly destroyed.
extirpate meaning in Bengali, Malayalam, Kannada and Assamese
extirpate in Bengali
- নির্মূল করা, শিকড়সহ উপড়ে ফেলা, সম্পূর্ণ ধ্বংস করা
extirpate in Malayalam
- destroy, weed out, eradicate
- വേരോടെ പിഴുതുകളയുക, പൂർണ്ണമായി നശിപ്പിക്കുക, കളപറിക്കുക, കളനീക്കുക, ഉന്മൂലനാശം വരുത്തുക, വംശവിച്ഛേദം വരുത്തുക
extirpate in Kannada
- ಅಳಿಸು, ಚಟ್ಟುಮಾಡು, ಪುಚ್ಚಳಿಸು
extirpate in Assamese
- to pull up by the roots
- উঘাল ughal, উভাল ubhal
More languagesFewer languages
- extirpate in Vietnamese
- bứng, nhổ rễ
Synonyms of extirpate
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of extirpate
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | extirpates |
| present participle | extirpating |
| past participle | extirpated |
| past | extirpated |
| Adjective | |
| comparative | more extirpate |
| superlative | most extirpate |
Origin of extirpate
The verb is first attested in 1538, the adjective in 1541; borrowed from Latin exstirpātus perfect passive participle of exstirpō (“to uproot”), from ex- (“out of”) + stirps (“the lower part of the trunk of a tree, including the roots; the stem, stalk”) + -ō (verb-forming suffix) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and -ate (adjective-forming suffix)). Doublet of extirp. Common participial usage of the adjective up until Early Modern English.
Questions about extirpate
- What does extirpate mean?
- Extirpate means to clear an area of roots and stumps.
- What is extirpate in Bengali?
- Extirpate in Bengali is নির্মূল করা, শিকড়সহ উপড়ে ফেলা, সম্পূর্ণ ধ্বংস করা. See Extirpate meaning in Bengali.
- What part of speech is extirpate?
- Extirpate can be a verb or an adjective.
- How do you pronounce extirpate?
- Extirpate is pronounced /ˈɛkstəpeɪt/ (UK).
- What is the past tense of extirpate?
- The past tense of extirpate is extirpated.
Words near extirpate in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: extirpate (page history and authors); Extirpate (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); extirpate (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); extirpate (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). 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.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-extirpate.ogg.
Cite this entry: “extirpate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/extirpate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.