obliterate.
To destroy (someone or something) completely, leaving no trace; to annihilate, to wipe out.
Meaning & usage
To destroy (someone or something) completely, leaving no trace; to annihilate, to wipe out.
To hide (something) by covering it; to conceal, to obscure.
The rainclouds obliterated the sun as they swept across the sky.
To make (a drawing, text which is printed or written, etc.) indecipherable, either by erasing or obscuring it; to blot out, to efface, to delete.
To impair the function and/or structure of (a body cavity, vessel, etc.) by ablating or occluding it (in the latter case, chiefly by filling it with tissue).
To cancel (a postage stamp) with a postmark so it cannot be reused.
To be destroyed completely, leaving no trace.
Of a body cavity, vessel, etc.: to close up or fill with tissue; of perfusion or a pulse: to cease owing to obstruction.
distal pulses obliterate until perfusion is restored
Where this word comes from
PIE word *h₁epi (start of 17th century) From earlier obliterat, learned borrowing from Latin obliterātus, oblitterātus (“having been blotted out, effaced, erased; having been forgotten”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix, of participial origin)). Obliterātus and oblitterātus are respectively the perfect passive participles of obliterō and oblitterō (“to blot out, efface, erase, obliterate; to cause to be forgotten”), probably either: * from ob- (prefix meaning ‘against; towards’) + littera (“letter of the alphabet; (metonymically) handwriting”) (further etymology unknown); or * from oblītus (“disregarded, neglected; forgotten”), influenced by littera. Oblītus is the perfect passive participle of oblinō (“to daub over, besmear”), from ob- + possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁lengʷʰ- (“not heavy, light; brief; swift”). Cognates * Catalan obliterar (“to erase; to cancel (a stamp); to close up or fill (a body cavity, vessel, etc.)”) * Middle French oblitérer (modern French oblitérer (“to cause (memories) to fade; to block, obstruct; to cancel (a stamp, ticket, etc.) so it cannot be reused”)) * Portuguese obliterar (“to destroy completely; to erase”) * Spanish obliterar (“to destroy completely; to erase”)
Completely destroyed or erased; effaced, obliterated.
Of markings on an insect: difficult to distinguish from the background; faint, indistinct.
Where this word comes from
Learned borrowing from Latin obliterātus (see more at Etymology 1 and -ate (adjective-forming suffix, of participial origin)).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.