abolish
Formsabolishes, abolishing, abolished
- 1To formally put an end to a law, system, institution, custom, or practice.
Reformers campaigned for decades to abolish slavery across the empire.
The legislature abolished the outdated licensing system last spring.
Similarcancel, repeal, annul, revoke, nullify
Note
Behind the word is a Latin image of growth cut short. Abolēre meant to check the growth of something, and so to destroy it, while abolēscere meant to wither and vanish. The noun is abolition, as in William Schabas's The abolition of the death penalty in international law. Its natural opposites are establish and found: what one generation founds, a later one may abolish.
- 2To put an end to or destroy something physical; to wipe it out entirely.
The rising waters threatened to abolish the crops and the cottages alike.
And with thy blood abolish so reproachful blot.
1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie QueeneNote
Here the verb reaches for things and people, not customs. Spenser wants a blot washed out with blood in The Faerie Queene (1590), and Tennyson still uses it in The Marriage of Geraint, of a hand catching at a sword hilt as if to abolish a man. In modern prose this use sounds poetic or deliberately old-fashioned. For ordinary destruction, destroy or wipe out is the safer choice.
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Origin
It comes via late Middle English abolisshen and Middle French abolir, from Latin abolēre ("to check the growth of, and by extension destroy or abolish"), related to the inchoative abolēscere ("to wither, vanish, cease").