- 1
To extirpate something is to destroy it so completely that none of it is left — as if you pulled a plant up by the roots, not just cut the top. People use it about things they badly want gone: a disease in a place, a pest, a , or, in more formal talk, corruption or a cruel custom. Doctors may say they extirpated a growth. History books and official writing may talk about extirpating a practice. Though actually, this is a heavy, word, and it sounds almost too strong for ordinary life. In everyday talk people say wipe out, stamp out, or get rid of completely. You almost never hear it about a person in casual speech; it sounds too Latin and too final.
根除、徹底消滅（醫療上也可說摘除）
組成From Latin exstirpō, “to uproot”: ex- (out of) + stirps (the lower trunk of a tree, including the roots) + -ate. First used as a verb in 1538. Doublet of the rarer verb extirp.
同家族的字
- extirpan older, rarer doublet from the same Latin verb meaning to uproot
原始詞典資料7 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，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。
extirpateverb/ˈɛkstəpeɪt/
- 1
obsoleteTo clear an area of roots and stumps.
- 2
To pull up by the roots; uproot.
- 3
To destroy completely; to annihilate.
- But you are not Hercules; nor able to extirpate the Evils of others: nor even Theſeus, to extirpate the Evils of Attica. Extirpate your own then.
- The simple object was to expel the natives, and to extirpate the Catholic religion.
- 4
biologynatural-sciencesTo cause a population to go extinct in a particular region, but not across the entire range of the species or subspecies.
- The cougar was extirpated across nearly all of its eastern North American range in the two centuries after European colonization.
- 5
To surgically remove.
extirpateadj
- 1
obsoleteExtirpated
- It is profitable […] to haue all occasions of sedicion […] to be extirpate.
- 2
obsoleteRooted out, extinct, utterly destroyed.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。