eliminate
Formseliminates, eliminating, eliminated
- 1To completely remove something or get rid of it, putting an end to it.
The company hopes to eliminate paper waste by switching to digital records.
Regular exercise helped eliminate her back pain over several months.
Similarremove, destroy, eradicate, abolish, erase
Note
Behind the word stands a doorway. Latin ēlīminō meant "to turn out of doors, banish", built on līmen, "threshold", and it is related to limit and limen. Every use keeps that picture of putting something out. Its objects range from smoke, dust and redundant steps to whole programs. Abolish suits an institution and erase a mark or record, while eliminate covers both.
- 2To remove someone from further competition, or to rule out a person or possibility during an investigation.
A single loss can eliminate a team from the tournament.
Investigators eliminated several theories before settling on the most likely cause.
Similarexclude, discount, dismiss, oust
Note
The verb is usually passive and is followed by as or from: eliminated as a suspect, eliminated as a contestant, eliminated from the tournament. Use as when naming the role a person loses and from when naming the contest or inquiry. The person ruled out is the subject, and the cause often follows in a when-clause, such as when the police interviewed witnesses.
- 3To kill a person or animal, often deliberately and as part of a plan.
The spy was ordered to eliminate the double agent before dawn.
Ranchers hired a marksman to eliminate the wolf threatening their herd.
Similarkill, liquidate, dispatch, murder
Note
The gangster's word for murder: a ruthless mobster eliminates his enemies rather than killing them. The slang works by understatement. It borrows the bland vocabulary of getting rid of something so that a death sounds like tidying up. That is why it reads as knowing or sinister. In a news report or formal writing, say killed or murdered instead.
- 4To destroy a facility and make it unusable, or to disable a soldier so they can no longer fight, not always by killing.
The squadron was tasked to eliminate the radar station before the main assault.
Snipers worked to eliminate enemy officers and weaken the chain of command.
Similarneutralize
Note
Military language uses it the way it uses neutralize. The aim is to take a target out of the fight, and the method is left open. A radar station is eliminated by wrecking it, and a soldier can be eliminated by being disabled as well as by being killed. Read it as a statement of outcome, and keep it apart from the slang "kill" meaning, where death is the whole point.
- 5To remove waste products from the body by excreting them.
The liver breaks down drugs so the body can eliminate them safely.
Healthy kidneys eliminate excess salt and water from the bloodstream.
Similarurinate, pee, defecate, void, excrete
Oppositeretain
Note
Physiology uses the verb both with and without an object. With one, it names what the body clears: drugs, salt, water. Without one, it simply means passing waste. Ilona Rodan and Sarah Heath's Feline Behavioral Health and Welfare (2015) uses it that way, describing cats that eliminated outside the litter box. That bare intransitive use is the plain clinical choice in veterinary and medical writing.
The puppy needs a chance to eliminate after every meal.
Some cats will not eliminate in a dirty litter box.
- 6To record entries in a consolidation statement that cancel out the effects of transactions between companies in the same group.
The group accountant must eliminate intercompany profits before preparing the consolidated balance sheet.
When the parent and subsidiary trade with each other, the bookkeeper eliminates those amounts in the combined statement.
Note
Consolidation accounting keeps the Latin picture closest: ēlīminō meant "to turn out of doors," from līmen, "a threshold." Sales, loans and balances between a parent and its subsidiaries never cross the group's threshold, so they are turned out of the combined figures. The object is always the amount or the transaction, never the company. A parent eliminates intercompany profit; it does not eliminate the subsidiary.
Practice
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Origin
Borrowed from Latin ēlīminātus, the participle of ēlīminō ("to turn out of doors, banish"), formed from ē- plus līmen ("a threshold"). It is related to Latin līmes ("a boundary") and to English limit and limen.