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Annihilate   /ənˈaɪəlˌeɪt/   Listen
Annihilate

verb
(past & past part. annihilated; pres. part. annihilating)
1.
Kill in large numbers.  Synonyms: carry off, decimate, eliminate, eradicate, extinguish, wipe out.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Annihilate" Quotes from Famous Books



... force. For some days panic reigned in London, and it is significant that Bridport took especial measures to guard the coasts of Ireland, thus enabling the French to get clear away to the Mediterranean. With bolder tactics they should have been able to reduce the new British possession, Minorca, or annihilate the small force blockading Malta. The relief felt at Dublin Castle, on hearing of Bruix' southward voyage, appears in Beresford's letter of 15th May, in which he refers to the revival of loyalty and the terrible ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... a rebuke so scathing and sudden as this, never fails to annihilate its object. Being assured by the rapturous applause which ever succeeds his efforts, that he has made a good hit, Bill suddenly becomes as impenetrable as Gibraltar, and ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park

... pride in vain endeavored to subdue, welling up from his heart, gathered under his eyelids, and volatiliz-ing on the cornea, had saved his sight. The vapor formed by his tears interposing between the glowing saber and his eyeballs, had been sufficient to annihilate the action of the heat. A similar effect is produced, when a workman smelter, after dipping his hand in vapor, can with impunity hold it over a stream of ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne

... maintained between them. It was more than probable that the chief was himself a spy in the Spanish camp, and that he was treacherously gathering his powerful armies at some favorable point where he could effectually annihilate the Spaniards, and enrich himself with all their possessions of armor and horses. It was therefore a matter of prudence, almost a vital necessity, for De Soto to throw an invisible guard around the chieftain, that all his ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

... at the exponent of such heresy, and was about to annihilate her with sarcasm, when he suddenly changed his mind. After all, she was right. It was what she called "the rough" that helped to make her voice unlike the voices of ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward

... mine should prejudice in any degree the important interests committed to us, or impair the strength of the case which I am about to submit to you on the part of Mr. Aubrey; a case which, I assure you, unless some extraordinary mischance should befall us, will, I believe, annihilate that which, with so much pains, so much tact, and so much ability, has just been laid before you by my learned friend Mr. Subtle; and establish the defendant in the safe possession of that large property which is the subject of the present most ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... even with these Congress may interfere in all excepting the mere place of choosing senators. Thus, you see, there is not the slightest permission for the States to discriminate against the right of any class of citizens to vote. Surely, to regulate can not be to annihilate; to qualify can not be wholly to deprive. To this principle every true Democrat and Republican said amen, when applied to black men by Senator Sumner in his great speeches from 1865 to 1869 for equal ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... as only the work of a Deity can impress, and only the spirit of an immortal can feel: they should remember that the slightest deformity, the most contemptible excrescence, can injure the effect of the noblest natural scenery, as a note of discord can annihilate the expression of the purest harmony; that thus it is in the power of worms to conceal, to destroy, or to violate, what angels could not restore, create or consecrate; and that the right, which every man unquestionably possesses, to be an ass, is extended only, in public, to those ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin

... God had foreknown that Adam would sin, and cast down, together with himself, his whole progeny into an abyss of miseries, why did he create him? At least, when our first father was ready to eat of the forbidden fruit, why did not that omnipotent hand, which gave him being, annihilate ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... Fifteen or twenty years ago it was the ineradicable belief of fifty or sixty million Americans, good, honest, sincere, and astute folk, that it was their bounden duty, their manifest interest, to fight—and in the words of one of their Senators, annihilate—Great Britain, in the interests of the Monroe Doctrine (which is a form of the "Balance of Power"). I do not think any one knew what the Monroe Doctrine meant, or could coherently defend it. An American Ambassador had an ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell

... the hero of the whole defence, advanced against Radagaisus. Upon Easter Day in the following year, however, he met Alaric at Pollentia and defeated him, but the Gothic king was allowed to withdraw from that field with the greater part of his cavalry entire and unbroken. Stilicho hoping to annihilate him forced him to retreat, overtook him at Asta (Asti), but again allowed him to escape and this time ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton

... the real winter, extended itself by degrees over the Basque land, after the few days of frost that had come to annihilate the annual plants, to change the deceptive aspect of the fields, to prepare ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti

... palace, and strangle the wretch who makes a game of virtue. Annihilate him who rewards the traitor, and knowingly treads upon the righteous man. Avenge mankind on ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... hatred and contempt. This embarrassment in which he finds himself produces in him the most unrighteous and criminal passion that can be imagined; for he conceives a mortal enmity against that truth which reproves him, and which convinces him of his faults. He would annihilate it, but, unable to destroy it in its essence, he destroys it as far as possible in his own knowledge and in that of others; that is to say, he devotes all his attention to hiding his faults both from others and from himself, and he cannot endure either that others should point them out to him, ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal

... Austria; the rights, freedom, and honor of all Germany expect their salvation only of our armies. Never shall they, instruments of oppression, carry on in foreign countries the endless wars of a destructive ambition, annihilate innocent nations, and with their own corpses pave for foreign conquerors the road leading to usurped thrones. Soldiers, we take up arms only for the liberty, honor, and rights of all Germany; it is these sacred boons that we have to defend!" [Footnote: Hormayr, ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... annihilate thyself and empty thyself of all created love, then should I be constrained to flow into thee ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... in Hinduism which definitely defeated, though it did not annihilate Buddhism, is generally connected with the names of Kumarila Bhatta (c. 750) and Sankara (c. 800). We know the doctrines of these teachers, for many of their works have come down to us, but when we enquire what was their political importance, or the scope and extent of the movement which ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... and the picture answered her, "It is the King's servant." And, lo! the face of the picture was the face of Charles Wogan. She covered her cheeks with her hands in a burning rush of shame; she struck in her thoughts at the face of that image with her clenched fists, to bruise, to annihilate it. "It is the King! It is the King! It is the King!" she cried in her remorse, but the image persisted. It still wore the likeness of Charles Wogan; it still repeated, "No, it is the King's servant." ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason

... I was convinced of the obligation under which I had been brought, that I could feel the force of the silent compact which had been effected between the unseen Power and my own soul, it would have been as easy for me to annihilate thought, to prevent its miraculous presence in the mind, as to withstand the urgent prickings of my conscience. I believed in my divine summons, and I was at once ready, vehement, and impatient to obey it. Had I followed the dictates ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... governments paid and for contracts prayed. I am now to Austria in the same task come. I would only some changes effect. I would only the language method—the luxurious, elaborate construction compress, the eternal parenthesis suppress, do away with, annihilate; the introduction of more than thirteen subjects in one sentence forbid; the verb so far to the front pull that one it without a telescope discover can. With one word, my gentlemen, I would your beloved language simplify so that, my ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... would have been a victory for us to have got our army away from Chattanooga safely. It was a manifold greater victory to drive away the besieging army; a still greater one to defeat that army in his chosen ground and nearly annihilate it. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... agreed that the truth was all on our side: and for his part he wished it to be thundered forth, so as at once to crush and annihilate all heretics, and ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... inform those of Lyons, Besancon, Chalons, Macon, and others beside. On the strength of this the municipal body of Macon, "considering that the enemies of the Revolution are ever making the most strenuous efforts to annihilate the Constitution which secures the happiness of this empire," and "that it is highly important to frustrate their designs," sends two hundred men of its National Guard to the chateau of Villiers," empowered to employ armed force in case of resistance." ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... the colonel's orderly this morning, and I heard that scout who came in just before noon tell him that there is a large party of hostiles between here and Fort Tyler. These deserters intend to take their weapons with them, and think they can make a good fight; but those Kiowas are strong enough to annihilate them." ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon

... termination of the world-process, they will meet, although coming from different directions. "While the soul worships a God, realises a God and knows of a God," says Eckhart, "it is separated from God. This is God's purpose, to annihilate Himself in the soul, so that the soul, too, shall lose itself. For God has been called God by the creatures." The words "The soul creates God from within, is connected with the divine and becomes divine itself," ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... rate of one hundred miles an hour. This pleases us, because we fancy we shall save time, and because we are taught that the chief object in life is to "get there" quickly. We really have an idea that it is a gain to annihilate distance, forgetting that as a matter of personal experience we are already too near most people. But this speed by rail will enable us to live in Philadelphia and do business in New York. It will make the city of Chicago two hundred miles square. And the bigger Chicago is, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... winter of age advances, the solitude of this condition becomes still more chilling. Nothing but that sweet resignation to the will of God, which religion gives, under all circumstances, can render such a situation tolerable. But religion does not annihilate the social affections; it only regulates them. It is evident, then, by a lawful and proper exercise of these affections, both our happiness and usefulness may be ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady

... were saved; the fever shall break out in an instant and consume all; the dropsy did no harm to the heavens from whence it fell, it did not put out those lights, it did not quench those heats; but the fever, the fire, shall burn the furnace itself, annihilate those heavens that breathe it out. Though the dogstar have a pestilent breath, an infectious exhalation, yet, because we know when it will rise, we clothe ourselves, and we diet ourselves, and we shadow ourselves to a sufficient prevention; but comets and blazing stars, ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne

... "United States," by luffing rapidly to the wind—flowing the jib-sheet and hauling out the spanker to hasten this movement—and at the same time backing the mizzen-topsail to steady her motions and position, was constituted a moving platform of guns, disposed in the very best manner to annihilate an opponent obliged to approach at a pretty ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... the ink-bottle, and play it about a little on the side of your hand farthest from the window; you will presently find you are throwing gleams of light all over the dark side of your hand, and in some positions of the glass the reflection from it will annihilate the shadow altogether, and you will see your hand dark on the white paper. Now a stupid painter would represent, for instance, a drinking-glass beside the hand of one of his figures, and because he had been taught by rule that "shadow was darker than the dark side," he would ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin

... warrant. I know that you will come upon nothing dishonorable to her, or detrimental to our relations as husband and wife, in this secret which is destroying our happiness. Her affection for me is undoubted, but something—God knows what—has laid waste her life. To find and annihilate that something is my first and foremost duty. It does not fit well with those other duties pressing upon me from the political field, does it? That is why I have called in help. That is why ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green

... of what are sometimes termed devil's lawyers, in all that part of the country, then consequentially gathered up his minutes of the testimony, glanced over them, and, clearing his throat, commenced his great final speech, which was to annihilate his opponent, and quash the whole proceedings of the prosecution. But he had scarcely spoken ten words, before a tremendous shout, rising somewhere in the direction of the bridge,—to which their attention had been before called, when a part of it had been swept away during ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... combing into rollers at an unwonted distance from shore; plunged with savage violence upon the sands of the shallows, as if it would annihilate them; and then, spreading swiftly, ran with terrific speed up the strand, seeming to devour everything it touched. After each recoil it sprang higher and roared louder and grew blacker with the mud that it had ground up from the bottom. Miles inland the ground trembled ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... States service, it was received with consternation and a perfect storm of disapproval. The young ladies, Norma and Blanche, rose as one woman—loud in denunciation, vehement in protest—fell upon the scheme, and verbally sought to annihilate it. The country! A farm!! The South!!! The idea was untenable, monstrous. Before their outraged vision floated pictures whereof the foreground was hideous with cows, and snakes, and beetles; the middle distance lurid with discomfort, corn-bread, and tri-weekly mails; the background lowering ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... place Wednesday afternoon and for a solid forty-five minutes the 'varsity did its level best to totally annihilate the second team, and almost succeeded. Things went with a most encouraging bang that day. Even Coach Robey was seen to smile, which, during practice, was a most extraordinary thing for him to do. The 'varsity had to work for what ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour

... capitally, or, at least, so it seemed to Levin. In order to work out the whole subject theoretically and to complete his book, which, in Levin's daydreams, was not merely to effect a revolution in political economy, but to annihilate that science entirely and to lay the foundation of a new science of the relation of the people to the soil, all that was left to do was to make a tour abroad, and to study on the spot all that had been done in the same direction, and to collect conclusive evidence ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... him than throw him off our Shoulders. And sink we must under his Management. Such Feebleness, & Want of Authority, such Confusion & Want of Discipline, such Waste, such destruction would exhaust the Wealth of both the Indies & annihilate the armies of all Europe and Asia." Richard Henry Lee agreed with Mifflin that Gates was needed to "procure the indispensable changes in our Army." Other Congressmen who were inimical to Washington, either by openly expressed opinion or by vote, were Elbridge Gerry, Samuel Adams, William Ellery, ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford

... to note, and to note with a great deal of care, that doubt, criticism, question, investigation, have no power to destroy anything. People talk as though, if you doubted a thing, it disappeared, as though doubt had magical power to annihilate in some way a truth. If you really do doubt an important divine truth, it may disturb and trouble you for a while; but the truth remains just the same. I remember some years ago a parishioner came to me, an intelligent lady, ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage

... restored Colonel Roosevelt had killed three elephants and Kermit had killed one of the calves. It had not been intended or desired to kill more than two of the cows, but with a herd of angry elephants threatening to annihilate an attacking party, sometimes the prearranged plans do not ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... untameable freebooters were themselves finally subdued by the Church. At first sight it seems curious that Christianity should have been so slow to reach Denmark. But we must bear in mind that one very important consequence of the Viking raids was to annihilate the geographical remoteness which had hitherto separated Denmark from the Christian world. Previously to 793 there lay between Jutland and England a sea which no keel had traversed within the memory of man. The few and peaceful traders who explored those northern waters were careful never to lose ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... royalists endeavoured to annihilate the charter, which their opponents defended, and thus a strange contradiction took place. The royal charter had the royalists for its enemies, whilst its defenders were only found amongst those who were stigmatized as the adherents ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... have found us—'gainst the horde Of robber Northmen, who, with torch and sword, Approach to desecrate The sacred hearthstone and the Temple-gate— Who would defile our fathers' graves, and cast Their ashes to the blast— Yea! who declare, "we will annihilate The very bound-lines of your sovereign State"— Against this ravening flood Of foul invaders, drunk with lust and blood, Oh! we, Strong in the strength of God-supported might, Go forth to give our foe no paltry fight, Nor basely yield To venal legions a scarce ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... the earth as existing to-day, life would again be developed, if we were in a condition instantaneously to annihilate all life; yet the same results would not be produced as in the original period, because the needed materials are no longer present in the mighty masses, nor in the requisite fluid and gaseous conditions to attain so powerful effects, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various

... take up the doctrine of the resurrection, and just show the world what a fraud it was, while Lord Lyttleton was going to take up the conversion of Saul, and just show the folly of it. These men were going to annihilate that doctrine and that incident of the gospel. A Frenchman said it took twelve fishermen to build up Christ's religion, but one Frenchman pulled it down. From Calvary this doctrine rolled along the stream of time, through the eighteen hundred years, down to us, and ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody

... that Napoleon had no other plan than to strike off to the right behind the Kohlgaerten, with his new army, and, proceeding from Stoetteritz, to turn his enemies on the right flank, and, as he had often done before, to attack and annihilate them. I was however egregiously mistaken. The emperor went with his retinue scarcely a thousand paces, to the first houses of the Kohlgaerten, where he took up his quarters, and quietly passed the night. The guards and the whole ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)

... cry in which hope and her soul itself seemed to depart fell swooning on the children's bed, and the little ones fled to the darkest corner of Mildred's room and cowered in speechless fear. There was none to face him save the slight girl, at whom he glared as if he would annihilate her. ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... cold: Space's blue walls are mined; we feel the throe From underground of our night-mantled foe: 10 The flame-winged feet Of Trade's new Mercury, that dry-shod run Through briny abysses dreamless of the sun, Are mercilessly fleet, And at a bound annihilate Ocean's prerogative of short reprieve; Surely ill news might wait, And man be patient of delay to grieve: Letters have sympathies And tell-tale faces that reveal, 20 To senses finer than the eyes. Their errand's purport ere ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... example of German "Kultur." According to the Germans it is supposed to annihilate whole brigades, but ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey

... confession of the Church's inability to appreciate and unwillingness to meet the spiritual needs of a civilization wonderfully unlike anything that has preceded it would be most disheartening. Least of all is there valid ground for hope in the case of those who fancy that if they can only annihilate this project, the day will speedily come when they can revise the Prayer Book in a manner perfectly conformable to their own conception of the "Ideal Liturgy," and after a fashion which the most ardent Anglo-Catholic must ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington

... Theory which falls under every one's Consideration, tho' indeed it can never be sufficiently considered, I shall here only take notice of that habitual Worship and Veneration which we ought to pay to this Almighty Being. We should often refresh our Minds with the Thought of him, and annihilate our selves before him, in the Contemplation of our own Worthlessness, and of his transcendent Excellency and Perfection. This would imprint in our Minds such a constant and uninterrupted Awe and Veneration as that which I am here recommending, and which is in reality a kind of incessant Prayer, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... "I could annihilate him. Oh, Captain Bodine, believe me, you have made a mistake. What will be left of our past if the best and bravest of our number strike hands with these ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe

... distinctly decipher the "signs of the times." The hierarchy cannot discover why people would have religion at a reduced price: in fact, they are all blind, and will not perceive that an enormous mass, in the shape of public opinion, hangs over their heads and threatens to annihilate them. Forgetting that kings, and princes, and lords, spiritual or temporal, have all been raised to their various degrees of exaltation by public opinion alone, they talk of legitimacy, of vested rights, and Deuteronomy.—Well, if there is to be ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... consequently, the recent alarming depredations upon our commerce, the serious obstacles to a safe communication, almost tantamount to a blockade of our Eastern ports by these pirates, imperiously call upon the British Government to adopt the most energetic means and decisive measures to crush their power and annihilate their resources, either by extirpating them wholly, or placing them and their possessions under such future control and checks, as shall prevent the possibility of a revival of a power capable of recurring to enormities that have so ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... composed of ignorant and ferocious men, ruled by force; the other, more enlightened, maintained its ground by address. The former, restless possessors of absolute power, and determined to grasp at every thing for preserving it, strove to annihilate the talents and knowledge which made them sensible of their humiliating inferiority. The others, holding the same language, acted in an opposite direction. But being obliged, in order to preserve their influence, never to shew themselves ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... most sanguine expectations, and I have but little doubt that its communications with the Ontario and Erie will be found to be very practicable, the whole forming a route which, in all respects, may annihilate the political consequences of Niagara and Lake Erie. * * * My ideas at present are to assemble the new corps, artificers, etc., at Cataraqui (Kingston), and to take its present garrison and visit Toronto and the heads of La Tranche, to pass down that river to Detroit, and early in the spring ...
— The Country of the Neutrals - (As Far As Comprised in the County of Elgin), From Champlain to Talbot • James H. Coyne

... experiment? I do not object to the statement that Matter is indestructible, but the meaning of this explicitly stated, is that in the light of the present knowledge of the race, we have experimented with Matter under certain extreme conditions—some chemical changes seeming, at first glance, to annihilate it—and have not been able to destroy it, therefore, Matter is indestructible. While this is true to an extent which preserves the integrity of the foundation for our Science and our Philosophy, it is at the same time consistent ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various

... restrain him from conduct which, by disturbing the harmony of nature, might involve himself, his people, and the universe in one common catastrophe. Far from adding to his comfort, these observances, by trammelling his every act, annihilate his freedom and often render the very life, which it is their object to preserve, a burden ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... difficulty. The state of society does not prepare them for it, and the nation might be in danger of losing its natural advantages if it sought artificially to acquire advantages of this particular kind. Amongst democratic communities, military discipline ought not to attempt to annihilate the free spring of the faculties; all that can be done by discipline is to direct it; the obedience thus inculcated is less exact, but it is more eager and more intelligent. It has its root in the will of him who obeys: it rests not only on his instinct, but on his reason; and consequently it will ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... natures. We cannot afford to be in ignorance of these. Pestilence breathes in the unventilated, unlighted, uncleansed recesses of a neglected nature. It is only on condition of the light of God's convincing Spirit being cast into every part of our being that we shall be able to overcome and annihilate the creeping swarms of microscopic sins that are there, minute but mighty in their myriads to destroy a man's soul. 'Search me' is the expression of a penitence that knows itself to be full of evil, that does not know ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... this pay and these pensions, and the adoption by Congress of the policy of a redundant and depreciated currency which will produce the same result. Every vote then in Congress for such a policy, is a vote to reduce the pay and pensions for our troops, and to annihilate the allotments made by them for the support of their families. What effect such a policy must have on our troops and the maintenance of the Union is but too palpable. It is disbandment and dissolution. Every such vote is given also to reduce the value of the wages of labor, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... I should do if we were surprised. At the sound of a footfall or the soft creak of a plank I felt that I might lose all control and leap up and brain him with the heavy bottle in my grasp. I had an insane desire to spring at his throat and throttle his infamous bravado, tumble him overboard and annihilate the last ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... into the eye; a process which, of course, again turns the visible body, and all visible things, out of the eye. And thus the procedure eternally defeats itself. Thus the very law which appears to annihilate, or render impossible, the objective existence of visible things, as creations independent of the eye—this very law, when carried into effect with a thorough-going consistency, vindicates and establishes that objective existence, with a logical force, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... not only the Illinois, but some of the tribes of the lakes, were in danger of speedy and complete destruction. "Tegannisorens loves the French," he wrote to Frontenac, "but neither he nor any other of the upper Iroquois fear them in the least. They annihilate our allies, whom by adoption of prisoners they convert into Iroquois; and they do not hesitate to avow that after enriching themselves by our plunder, and strengthening themselves by those who might have aided us, they will pounce ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... a cab and drove to his club, where he lunched, and mopingly spent a great part of the afternoon in making calculations for the foundations of the castle works. Later in the afternoon he returned to his chambers, wishing that he could annihilate the three days remaining before the tenth, particularly this coming evening. On his table was a letter in a strange writing, and indifferently turning it over he found from the superscription that it had been addressed to him ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... secretly adopt your idea, I openly assert that it was never yours at all, but mine from the beginning, by the prerogatives of greater age, wider experience, and immeasurably superior wisdom. If you have an idea upon any subject, I will utterly annihilate it to my own most profound satisfaction; if you have none concerning any special point, I will force you to accept mine, as mine, or to die the intellectual death. That is the general theory ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... know that whilst he just existed abroad, the great estates enjoyed by his father were being subjected to pillage by Cromwell's soldiers, or sold for pitiful sums by the Commissioners appointed by the Parliament to break up and annihilate many of the old properties in England. Burleigh-on-the-Hill, the stately seat on which the first duke had lavished thousands, had been taken by the Roundheads. It was so large, and presented so long a line ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... you,—superfluous request, perhaps, the fulfilment of a woman's fancy, the prayer of a jealousy we all must feel,—I pray you to burn all that especially belonged to us, destroy our chamber, annihilate all that is a memory ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac

... there have been few more gratuitous invocations of the earthquake than on a certain occasion, some five years ago, when it was employed by the inmate of a north-country manse, at once to account for the removal of the boulder-stone of Petty Bay, and to annihilate at a blow the geology of the Free Church editor of the Witness. I had briefly stated in one of my papers, in referring to this curious incident, that the boulder of the bay had been "borne nearly ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... after shore leave, a drunken trimmer or stoker gets up to the Chief's room and has to be subdued by the power of executive eye or the strength of executive arm. As most Chiefs are Scots, the eye is generally sufficient. So the Chief, mightily ferocious, turned about, eye set, as one may say, to annihilate a six-foot trimmer in filthy overalls and a hangover, and saw—a small red-haired ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... days to come," he exclaimed, "know any change in my feelings and breathe a word to any living soul, may heaven blast me and earth annihilate me!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... fashion, and once I saw him attempt to drive away a golden-winged woodpecker who took the liberty of alighting on a neighboring dead tree-trunk. Down upon him like a small tornado came the flycatcher instantly, expecting, apparently, to annihilate him. But the big, clumsy woodpecker merely slid one side a little, to avoid the onslaught, and calmly went on dressing his feathers as if no small flycatcher existed. This indifference did not please the olive-sided, but he alighted on a branch ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller

... you must make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate his power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery. The man that takes his earnings, must be able to convince him that he has a perfect right to do so. It must not depend upon mere force; the slave must know ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... sordid parts of humanity, and he made the power and glory of England one with his own. He could change front through resentment or through policy; but in whatever path he moved, his objects were the same: not to curb the power of France in America, but to annihilate it; crush her navy, cripple her foreign trade, ruin her in India, in Africa, and wherever else, east or west, she had found foothold; gain for England the mastery of the seas, open to her the great highways ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... retired to consult with the officers, Tom heard with pleasure how much his two companions had worked upon the Yankees' fears, during his absence, by details of the vindictive feelings of the Delawares, and their vows to annihilate the Buffalo militia. ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... much knowledge need not be expected from such trading hucksters as they. Their energies in the East have been expended throughout a period of two centuries, with no other apparent object than to promote dissension, wherever it was possible; and to annihilate every spark of freedom or nobility among the races who have had the misfortune to ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid

... for it can develop in him only that which exists in him as a possibility. It can lead and assist, but it has no power to create. What nature has denied to a man education cannot give him, any more than it can on the other hand annihilate his original gifts, though it may suppress, distort, and measurably destroy them. And yet it is impossible to decide what is the real essence of a man's individuality until he has left behind him the years of growth, because it is not till then that he fully ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz

... tone, not quite nervous, but thin and worn. Miriam's attitude grew tense. Ford took a step forward from the fireside. With his arm flung over the back of his chair, and his knee resting on the seat of it, he strained across the table, as if to annihilate the space between Wayne ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... destroy, destroy his enemies! Kill! kill! Reduce them to ashes! Drive them away! Devour them! devour them! Cut them in two! Drink! drink their blood! Destroy them root and branch! With thy thunderbolt, spear, scymitar, discus, or rope, annihilate them! ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... place watchmen at the doors of every house and at the corner of every street, but it must not count on the better classes coming forward to enrol themselves as special constables, or even on the cooeperation of public opinion which in England would annihilate that kind of Nihilism with one ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller

... that the natives, being so vastly superior in numbers to the Boers, do not rise and annihilate them? The people among whom they live are Bechuanas, not Kaffirs, though no one would ever learn that distinction from a Boer; and history does not contain one single instance in which the Bechuanas, ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler

... supposing that it has: yet on this folly rest most of the accusations against her. Reduce her to a rational being, and you degrade her to the level of an inferior man. But she is not his inferior: she is his dream, his magnet, his force, his inspiration, and his fate. Take her away, and you annihilate him: Othello's occupation's gone. Nine-tenths of the great things done in the world have been done for a woman. Why? Exactly because she would burn down a street to boil her baby's milk. No rational being would do that: but we all owe our ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain

... province. It was feared if the exclusive power were granted to the Colonial Legislature of appropriating all the sums necessary for the civil expenditure of the province, that it would give the Legislature absolute control over the officers of the empire and of the colony, and annihilate, if not actually, potentially, the imperium of Great Britain over her colony. A distinction was drawn between the privileges of a colonist and of the resident of the United Kingdom. While every municipality in the latter was permitted ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... it to the distressed 'Young Family Man' whether these three institutions of a bakery, a cook-shop, and a laundry, in the village where he lives, would not virtually annihilate his household cares, and restore peace and comfort to his ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... that the more systematically and effectively we annihilate the bourgeois and landlord class, and all the institutions belonging to them, the easier it will be to erect the ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward

... You must remember, too, that in the extremity of their terror, or for other reasons, the Yankees and negroes in Fort Pillow neglected to haul down their flag. In truth, relying upon their gun-boats, the officers expected to annihilate our forces after we had entered the fortifications. They did ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... the Union. The right to make war and peace, to coin money, maintain armies and navies, etc., etc., in themselves overshadow most of the sovereignty of the States. The amendatory clause would seem to annihilate it. By the provisions of that clause three fourths of the States can take away all the powers and rights now resting in the hands of the respective States, with a single exception. This exception gives breadth ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... manhood. The telegraph, which has given the world a new nervous system, being less an invention than an evolution, had from the labors of Prof. Joseph Henry, in Albany, and of Wheatstone, of England, become, by Morse's invention of the dot-and-line alphabet, a far-off writer by which men could annihilate time and distance. One of the first to experiment with the new power—old as eternity, but only slowly revealed to man—was Carleton's brother-in-law, Prof. Moses G. Farmer, whose services to science have never yet been ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis

... love one another, my God! my God! 1et us love one another or we are lost. Let us destroy, let us deny, let us annihilate politics, since it divides us and arms us against one another; let us ask from no one what he was and what he wanted yesterday. Yesterday all the world was mistaken, let us know what we want today. If it is not liberty for all and fraternity towards all, do not let us attempt ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... govern psychical phenomena are as occult as the abstraction of the "fourth division of space"; and they defy the realism of common-place probability, mock all analysis, and annihilate distance. When Beryl had first met the keen scrutiny of Mr. Dunbar's glittering blue eyes, their baleful influence made her shiver slightly; and now at the instant in which he approached, and inspected her closely, she forgot that she was on trial for her life, became temporarily ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... sank toward late afternoon, the savage force massed for its great, crushing blow that should annihilate us. The strong center, made up of the flower of every tribe engaged, was on the crest of a long, westward-reaching slope, a splendid company of barbaric warriors—strong, eager, vengeful, doggedly determined to finish now the struggle with the power ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter

... purple-hung. She had persuaded Joanna to have a bathroom fitted up, with hot and cold water and other glories, and though she had been unable to induce her to banish her father's Bible and the stuffed owls from the parlour, she had been allowed to supplement—and practically annihilate—them with the notorious black cushions from Donkey Street. Joanna was a little proud to have these famous decorations on the premises, to be indoors what her yellow waggons were outdoors, symbols ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... was disposed to think that she herself would go to London. She was eager to know the truth—eager to utter her loud maternal bleatings if any wrong were threatened to her lamb. Florence might go with her, but she longed herself to be on the field of action. She felt that she could almost annihilate any man by her words and looks who would dare to ill-treat a ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... insolently if silently. It was more for Elsa's sake than for his own that Warrington allowed the other to stare him down. Alone, he would have surrendered to the Berserk rage that urged him to leap across the intervening space and annihilate the man, to crush him with his bare hands until he screamed for the mercy he had always denied others. The flame passed, leaving him as cold as ashes. "I shall tell you who he is ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath

... Sir, the people of this country would rise and annihilate any Government that dared to ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille

... did not see Jethro, either, as he strode across to her. Indeed, her first intimation of his presence was a dig in her arm. The lady turned, gave a gasp of amazement at the figure confronting her, and proceeded to annihilate it with an eye that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... not yet gained prudence from their last "brushing." The superiority of our arms, our tactics, discipline, and art of intrenchment, together with the good service of two clumsy old Spanish four-pounders, enabled us not only in a short time to destroy the league, but also to crush and annihilate for ever some of our treacherous neighbours. As it would be tedious to a stranger to follow the movements of the whole campaign, I will merely mention that part of it in which ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... influence the whole system was sustained. It was not, however, in equilibrium; at least, not in stable equilibrium. There was a trend, as I soon became aware, towards a centre. The energy of love was constantly striving to annihilate distance and unite in a single sphere the scattered units that were only kept apart by the energy of hate. This effort I felt proceeding in every particular group, and, more faintly, from one group to another: I felt it with an intensity at once of pain and ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson

... have done what I thought impossible—fused a woman's face and grand scenery, to make them inseparable. She might be wicked for me. I should see a bright rim round hatred of her!—the rock you describe. I could endure horrors and not annihilate her! I should ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... that had been lost in spite of them, had Washington possessed but a few fresh troops. The English general had been out-manoeuvred, his best brigade cut to pieces, and the army he had thought to annihilate was safe among the ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... power which stood in the way of Assyria's supremacy in Western Asia; already, in spite of his efforts, the city had sprung up from its ruins as vigorous as ever, and his sons and grandsons had felt themselves irresistibly drawn to resuscitate that which their ancestors had desired to annihilate irrevocably. Babylon had rebuilt her palaces, her walls, and her temples; she had received back her gods without a war, and almost without any agitation, by the mere force of the prestige she exercised over all around her, and even over her conquerors. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... another again, what availed it, since she was but a corpse, and he was about to bid farewell to the life of the world? As the doctors condemned her, as she would never be woman, nor wife, nor mother, he, on his side, might well renounce manhood, and annihilate himself, dedicate himself to God, to whom his mother gave him. And he still felt within him the soft bitterness of that last interview: Marie smiling painfully at memory of their childish play and prattle, and speaking to him of the happiness which he would assuredly find in the service of God; ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... Union. This, alone, was reason strong enough, in a country where the will of the majority is the law, and ought to be the law. He saw that the objects of the institution were too light to be opposed to considerations as serious as these; and that it was become necessary to annihilate it absolutely. On this, therefore, he was decided. The first annual meeting at Philadelphia was now at hand; he went to that, determined to exert all his influence for its suppression. He proposed it to his fellow officers, and urged it with all his powers. It ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... will not protect us, the sooner we know it the better: anything is preferable to the horrid state of suspense we are now reduced to; at all events, we must resist every concession. Let us not make the Catholics stronger, the better to enable them to annihilate us at a future day. The Protestants must unite for their own protection; and although Mr. Pitt's Government will not defend us, possibly the weight of all the Parliamentary power of Ireland thrown ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... been left, for a full half hour to breathe, when suddenly the head of a small column showed itself in full advance towards us. We were at this time amply supported by other troops, as well in communication as in reserve; and willing to annihilate the corps now approaching, we forbade the men to fire till it should be mingled with us. We did even more than this. Opening a passage for them through our centre, we permitted some hundred and twenty men to march across ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various

... asked the Greek, scarce daring to raise his head from the ground. "Did not the bolt annihilate thee? art ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... possessions, these Teutons fought as brothers will. Exterminating the Britons was diversified with efforts to exterminate one another. Seven kingdoms, four Anglian and three Saxon, for 300 years tried to annihilate each other; then, finally submitting to the strongest, united completely,—as only children of one household of nations can do. The Saxons had been for two centuries dominating more and more until ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele

... distance mocks at retreat that he leads out in open hostility against the white man. Here General Sheridan had given Colonel Forsyth commission to organize a Company of Plainsmen. And this Company was to drive out or annihilate the roving bands of redskins who menaced every home along the westward-creeping Kansas frontier in the years that followed the Civil War. It was to offer themselves to this cause that the men from Morton's community, whom I had joined, rode across the divide from the Saline ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter

... foundations of sacredness for all men. You renounced me—you still banish me—as a son"—there was an involuntary movement of indignation in Deronda's voice—"But that stronger Something has determined that I shall be all the more the grandson whom also you willed to annihilate." ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... existence the whole material world; but we also believe that he then impressed matter with laws, under the action of which that material world must maintain its existence, and secure its permanence, until the same almighty power shall annihilate it. We are not of those who judge of the works of the Deity from the conditions of the works which can alone be effected by the power of man. However perfect or complete be human mechanism, it can only move by the application of some power inherent ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... journalist, drew in a chair by the side of Lord Rockminster and humbly fawned. And meanwhile Quirk, head downward, so to speak, charged rank and file, and sent them flying; arose again and swept the heads off officers; and was just about to annihilate the volunteers when ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black

... mystery your Sar will end." The King distressed now to the temple goes To lay before the mighty gods his woes; This prayer recites to drive away bad dreams, While Samas' holy altar brightly gleams: [13] "O Samas! may my prayer bring me sweet rest, And may my Lord his favor grant to me: Annihilate the things that me invest! This day, O God! distressed, I cry to thee! O goddess! be thou gracious unto me, Receive my prayer, my sins forgive I pray: My wickedness and will arrayed 'gainst thee. ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... number, the former would appear to be the natural course for a general to adopt; as Frederick had with him but twenty-three thousand men. Of this fact, however, Soubise would be ignorant, and might only have heard that the Prussian army was marching to annihilate him. ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty

... brings forward each wing as our cavalry advance, and threatens to annihilate them as they pass on. Turning a little to their left so as to meet the Russian right the Greys rush on with a cheer that thrills to every heart—the wild shout of the Enniskilleners rises through the air at the same instant. As lightning ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... proposes to render, in a great measure, inert and unedifying, the mass of English literature for three centuries; to rob us of the glory of the past, and much of the instruction of future ages; to blind us to excellencies which few may hope to equal, and none to surpass; to annihilate associations which are interwoven with our best sentiments, and give to distant times and countries a presence and reality, as if they were in fact his own. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... terrible, the future far more so; every day adds to the power and facility of the means of destruction. Science is hard at work (science, the great—nay, to some the only—God of these days) to discover and concentrate the shortest and easiest methods to annihilate the human race." We see the results of that work ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell

... Antoninus, p. 63. "Thou shalt be required to go to God, to die, and give up your account."—BARNES'S NOTES: on Luke, xii, 20. "And canst thou expect to behold the resplendent glory of the Creator? would not such a sight annihilate you?"—Milton. "If the prophet had commanded thee to do some great thing, would you have refused?"—Common School Journal, i, 80. "Art thou a penitent? Evince your sincerity by bringing forth fruits meet for repentance."—Christian's Vade-Mecum, p. 117. "I will call thee my dear ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... 'Of course you will annihilate me, but it will be a relief to play,' answered Mary. 'That strange old man has given me a shock. Everything about his surroundings is so different from what I expected. And how could an uncle of Steadman's come by all that money—and those jewels—if they ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... imprisonment, there was an unusual stir in the building soon after nightfall. Intercourse between the different rooms is prevented as much as possible, but the channels of covert communication are many, and not easily cut off. In ten minutes every one was aware that the iron-clads which were to annihilate Charleston had recoiled, beaten and wounded. My mate rejoiced greatly after his saturnine fashion, and I—the fullness of listlessness being not yet—felt a brief glow of satisfaction. Others were more demonstrative. ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... extinguishment, extirpation, Nirvana, obliteration. V. not exist &c 1; have no existence &c 1; be null and void; cease to exist &c 1; pass away, perish; be extinct, become extinct &c adj.; die out; disappear &c 449; melt away, dissolve, leave not a rack behind; go, be no more; die &c 360. annihilate, render null, nullify; abrogate &c 756; destroy &c 162; take away; remove &c (displace) 185; obliterate, extirpate. Adj. inexistent^, nonexistent &c 1; negative, blank; missing, omitted; absent &c 187; insubstantial, shadowy, spectral, visionary. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget



Words linked to "Annihilate" :   annihilative, annihilator, annihilation, kill



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