- 1滅絕；消滅（對蟲鼠時，台灣口語常說「滅蟲」「消滅」）
To exterminate a kind of person or animal is to kill so many of them that that kind is gone — not one fight, not a few deaths, but the aim that none are left. About people this is a very heavy word, the sort you meet in history when a group is hunted down so it will disappear. About rats, ants, or , English speakers use it more lightly: the pest-control person comes to exterminate the bugs. Though actually, even there the picture is the same: wipe them out, do not just chase a few away. It sounds official and a little old; in everyday talk about people, many would pick a plainer, less report-like word, because this one already feels like a dark file or a news report.
組成From Latin exterminātus, from exterminō: ex- “thoroughly” + terminō “to finish or end,” from terminus “limit, end.”
同家族的字
- terminatesame Latin terminus “end”: to bring something to an end
- terminalsame root: the end point
- terminusthe Latin word kept in English for an end or limit
- exterminationthe noun for this killing
- exterminatorthe person (or company) who does it
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
exterminateverb/ɛkˈstəː.mɪ.neɪt/
- 1
To kill or otherwise permanently eliminate all of (a population, often of pests or undesirables), usually intentionally.
- We'll use poison to exterminate the rats.
- The natives everywhere eat their [sc. cuscuses] flesh, and as their motions are so slow, easily catch them by climbing; so that it is wonderful they have not been exterminated. It may be, however, that their dense woolly fur protects them from birds of prey, and the islands they live in are too thinly inhabited for man to be able to exterminate them.
- 2
To bring a definite end to; to finish completely.
- The public school failed to exterminate truancy.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。