Demolish

How to spell demolish

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce demolish

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does demolish mean?

1. verbTo pull down or destroy something thoroughly, especially a building or structure.

Demolish in a sentence

• The council plans to demolish the old factory next spring.

• A single well-prepared rebuttal can demolish a weak argument.

Where does demolish come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This verb comes from the Latin demoliri, which combined the prefix de- meaning 'down' or 'completely' with moliri meaning 'to build' or 'to construct with great effort'. That verb in turn rested on moles, meaning a great mass, heap, or massive structure, the same root that gives us 'mole' as in a breakwater. So at its heart demolish means to undo a thing that was laboriously built up, to pull the mass back down. English took it in the 1500s by way of the Old French demoliss-, the stem of demolir, and that French stem is the reason the modern English word ends in -ish rather than something closer to the Latin. Over time the sense broadened from literally tearing down buildings to figuratively destroying arguments, records, or large meals.

How the word is built

• de- (down, completely)
• mol (build/mass, from Latin moliri)
• -ish (verb suffix, via French -iss)