Eliminate

How to spell eliminate

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce eliminate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does eliminate mean?

1. verbTo completely remove or get rid of something.
2. verbTo remove a competitor or option from a contest or process.

Eliminate in a sentence

• The new software helps eliminate duplicate entries from the database.

• One more loss would eliminate the team from the tournament.

• A balanced budget should eliminate unnecessary spending.

• The interview panel will eliminate the weakest candidates first.

Where does eliminate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin verb eliminare, meaning literally 'to put out of doors' or 'to thrust over the threshold'. It was built from the prefix ex-, meaning 'out', and the noun limen, which meant 'threshold' or 'doorway', the same root that gives us 'liminal'. So to eliminate something was originally to show it the door, to expel it from the house entirely. English adopted the word in the late 1500s, at first keeping that physical sense of turning out or banishing, before the meaning broadened to the modern idea of getting rid of, removing, or excluding anything at all. The single l and single m are the usual spelling trap, since the unstressed middle vowels offer no clear guide to the writer.

How the word is built

• e- (from ex-: out)
• limin (from limen: threshold)
• -ate (verb suffix)