Annihilation

How to spell annihilation

12 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce annihilation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does annihilation mean?

1. nounThe complete destruction or obliteration of something, leaving nothing behind.

Annihilation in a sentence

• The flood brought near-total annihilation to the riverside town.

• The treaty was meant to prevent the annihilation of both nations in a nuclear war.

Where does annihilation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin verb annihilare, which meant literally 'to reduce to nothing'. It was built from the prefix ad-, meaning 'to' (assimilated to an- before the n), and nihil, the Latin word for 'nothing', which also survives in 'nihilism' and 'nil'. Medieval theologians used annihilatio to describe God reducing something completely out of existence, and the noun passed into English through French in the early 1600s with that strong sense of total destruction. The spelling trap lives in the middle: the doubled n at the start and the silent-looking 'hi' cluster, both of which echo the original nihil. Remembering that the heart of the word is the Latin nihil, 'nothing', explains why it is anni-HIL-ation and not 'anialation'.

How the word is built

• an- (from Latin ad-, 'to')
• nihil (nothing)
• -ation (noun of action)