Extirpate

Quick meaning: Extirpate is a verb meaning (transitive, obsolete) To clear an area of roots and stumps.

Meaning

(transitive, obsolete) To clear an area of roots and stumps.

More Meanings

1. (transitive) To pull up by the roots; uproot.
2. (transitive) To destroy completely; to annihilate.
3. (biology) To cause a population to go extinct in a particular region, but not across the entire range of the species or subspecies.
4. (transitive) To surgically remove.
5. (as a participle) Extirpated
6. (as a participial adjective) Rooted out, extinct, utterly destroyed.

Example Sentences

It is profitable […] to haue all occasions of sedicion […] to be extirpate.

The simple object was to expel the natives, and to extirpate the Catholic religion.

They [steam trains] are everything modern life tries to extirpate in favour of silence, smoothness and cleanness.

The cougar was extirpated across nearly all of its eastern North American range in the two centuries after European colonization.

Word Forms

• extirpates
• extirpating
• extirpated

Synonyms for extirpate

Depending on context, synonyms include uproot, eradicate, extricate, deracinate, annihilate, destroy.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include eradicate, deracinate, uproot, exterminate, pull up, eliminate.

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