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Annihilate   Listen
verb
Annihilate  v. t.  (past & past part. annihilated; pres. part. annihilating)  
1.
To reduce to nothing or nonexistence; to destroy the existence of; to cause to cease to be. "It impossible for any body to be utterly annihilated."
2.
To destroy the form or peculiar distinctive properties of, so that the specific thing no longer exists; as, to annihilate a forest by cutting down the trees. "To annihilate the army."
3.
To destroy or eradicate, as a property or attribute of a thing; to make of no effect; to destroy the force, etc., of; as, to annihilate an argument, law, rights, goodness.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Annihilate" Quotes from Famous Books



... wretched man, Zeus will annihilate me, if I do not shout out at the top of my voice, to inform him ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... clamouring for her to see his gift and rejoice over it with him, for "little Mum" went halves in everything. The great horns skirmished about her as if to toss her to the ceiling; the war clubs hurtled over her head as if to annihilate her; an amazing medley from the four quarters of the globe filled her lap, and seven excited boys all ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... se'nnight, and my bed these three days, but hope to get up to-morrow. You know my writing and my veracity, and that I would not deceive you. As to my person, it will not be so easy to reconnoitre it, for I question whether any of it will remain; it was easy to annihilate so airy a ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... will soon turn out of any place where war is declared against them: they only dare to brawl as long as they find people are afraid of them: wolf-like they tear to pieces only those they find defenceless: but one wisp of burning straw will annihilate them. We must set the ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... progress at the lower bridge, where the ice, though sunk several feet below the rushing waters, still adhered firmly to the shore. Vast pieces of ice were piled up against the abutments of the bridge, which the mountain of ice threatened to annihilate, as well as to inundate the lower end of ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... capitally, or, at least, so it seemed to Levin. In order to work out the whole subject theoretically and to complete his book, which, in Levin's daydreams, was not merely to effect a revolution in political economy, but to annihilate that science entirely and to lay the foundation of a new science of the relation of the people to the soil, all that was left to do was to make a tour abroad, and to study on the spot all that had been done in the same direction, and to collect conclusive evidence that all that had been ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... that govern psychical phenomena are as occult as the abstraction of the "fourth division of space"; and they defy the realism of common-place probability, mock all analysis, and annihilate distance. When Beryl had first met the keen scrutiny of Mr. Dunbar's glittering blue eyes, their baleful influence made her shiver slightly; and now at the instant in which he approached, and inspected her closely, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... in every person's recollection that, in consequence of the National Convention having decreed the abolition of royalty in France, it was proposed to annihilate every vestige of it throughout the country. But, probably, you are not aware of the thorough sweep that was made among the sepultures in this ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... sir." His little fingers were engulfed in a mighty paw. "I saw it all, I tell you," he babbled. "We've got them on the run. We'll sweep the filthy devils clean off the Earth. We'll annihilate them." ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner

... Buddha, on thy Lotus-throne, With praying eyes and hands elate, What mystic rapture dost thou own, Immutable and ultimate? What peace, unravished of our ken, Annihilate ...
— The Golden Threshold • Sarojini Naidu

... captain, striking his clinched fist against the table, dashed from the room. Before he reached his ship he had sworn a solemn oath: he vowed that he would follow that pirate ship; he would kill, burn, destroy, annihilate, but out of the storm and the fire he would pick unharmed the father of the girl who had entranced him and had spurned him. He laughed savagely as he thought of it. With that dolt of a father in his hands, a man wearing always around his neck the hangman's noose, he ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton

... the hierarchy of the church, but her labours as a missionary church were over. Henceforth she worked not by missionaries and apostles, but by crusades and bulls. Now she raised mighty armaments to recover the barren soil of the Holy Sepulchre, or to annihilate heretic Albigenses. Now she established great orders, Templars and Hospitallers, whose pride and luxury, and pomp, brought swift destruction on one at least of those fraternities. Now she became feudal,—she owned land instead of hearts, and forgot that ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... spent the time of the operation in the oratory, and there had been so entirely overcome by the tidings that all was safely over, that he was hardly fit to go to Cherry when he was sent for, and that was not soon, for the effect of chloroform on her had indeed been to annihilate pain, but only half to make her unconscious, for she went on talking to Felix about the expedience all the time, ever repeating the old motto, 'Under Wode, Under Rode;' and the trance had lasted for a good while, though when once over, she remembered nothing of ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the side of your hand farthest from the window; you will presently find you are throwing gleams of light all over the dark side of your hand, and in some positions of the glass the reflection from it will annihilate the shadow altogether, and you will see your hand dark on the white paper. Now a stupid painter would represent, for instance, a drinking-glass beside the hand of one of his figures, and because ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin

... with the music. The sunlight gleamed from their bayonets. Their standards waved in the breeze, while the drum, the fife, the bugle, and the trumpet thrilled you as never before. You marched proudly and defiantly. You felt that you could annihilate the stoutest Rebel. You followed the soldiers to the railroad depot and hurrahed till the train which bore them away ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin

... this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn[3] that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down—but with a shudder even ...
— Short-Stories • Various

... thoroughly understand and appreciate our fellow-beings we must know what they do and how they do it; otherwise we cannot give them credit for their virtues, or judge them properly for their faults. If I could prevent crime I would annihilate it, and when it ceased to exist the necessity for describing it would also cease. But it does exist. It is a powerful element in the life of the human race. Being known and acknowledged everywhere, it should be understood; therefore it should ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton

... friends, and spotless reputation; of having doomed myself to infamy and detestation, to hopeless exile, penury, and servile toil. These were the evils which his malignant destiny had made the unalterable portion of Clithero, and how should my imperfect eloquence annihilate these evils? Every man, not himself the victim of irretrievable disasters, perceives the folly of ruminating on the past, and of fostering a grief which cannot reverse or recall the decrees of an immutable ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown

... seem to be the opposed, elemental manifestations of the spirit of our globe, the one seeking only evil, injustice, tyranny and suffering, while the other strives for liberty, the right, radiance and joy. These two powers stand once again face to face; our opportunity is now to annihilate the one that comes from below. Let us know how to be pitiless that we may have no more need for pity. It is a measure of organic defence. It is essential that the modern world should stamp out Prussian militarism as it would stamp out a poisonous fungus that for half a century had disturbed ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck

... General Percival Smith, ex-Brigadier in the United States service, it was received with consternation and a perfect storm of disapproval. The young ladies, Norma and Blanche, rose as one woman—loud in denunciation, vehement in protest—fell upon the scheme, and verbally sought to annihilate it. The country! A farm!! The South!!! The idea was untenable, monstrous. Before their outraged vision floated pictures whereof the foreground was hideous with cows, and snakes, and beetles; the middle distance lurid with discomfort, corn-bread, and tri-weekly mails; the background lowering with ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... men.—A horrible discovery! The municipal authorities of Valence immediately inform those of Lyons, Besancon, Chalons, Macon, and others beside. On the strength of this the municipal body of Macon, "considering that the enemies of the Revolution are ever making the most strenuous efforts to annihilate the Constitution which secures the happiness of this empire," and "that it is highly important to frustrate their designs," sends two hundred men of its National Guard to the chateau of Villiers," empowered to employ armed force in case of resistance." For greater security, this troop is joined ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... the bar, that the acts of the Legislature of Georgia seize on the whole Cherokee country, parcel it out among the neighboring counties of the State, extend her code over the whole country, abolish its institutions and its laws, and annihilate ...
— Opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States, at January Term, 1832, Delivered by Mr. Chief Justice Marshall in the Case of Samuel A. Worcester, Plaintiff in Error, versus the State of Georgia • John Marshall

... said, "we will turn this electronic projector on him and his party and annihilate them. You have its firing ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings

... warning."—Ld. Kames cor. "Wast thou born only for pleasure? wast thou never to do any thing?"—Collier cor. "Thou shalt be required to go to God, to die, and to give up thy account."—Barnes cor. "And canst thou expect to behold the resplendent glow of the Creator? would not such a sight annihilate thee?"—Milton cor. "If the prophet had commanded thee to do some great thing, wouldst thou have refused?"—C. S. Journal cor. "Art thou a penitent? evince thy sincerity, by bringing forth fruits meet for repentance."—Vade-Mecum ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... and swim on to shore. There were plenty of spectators, many thousands looking out of windows, and doors, and balconies, and thinking that those outer barbarians had become rather bold and impudent. But there was a general in the city, and for his military credit he turned out his army to annihilate the invaders. Seeing this, the commodore landed his marines, whose steady fire on the braves sent them to the right about, and made them march back again in double-quick time. The five junks were then taken in tow, and, very much to the enlightenment of the minds ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston

... raised in fever, the mental processes may go over into far-reaching confusion; if hashish is smoked, the mind wanders to paradise, and a few glasses of wine may give a new mental optimism and exuberance; a cup of tea may make us sociable, a dose of bromide may annihilate the irritation of our mind, and when we inhale ether, the whole content of consciousness fades away. In every one of these cases, the body received the chemical substance, the blood absorbed and carried ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg

... people. He could but realize that some day the swarms of foreigners that were arriving each year would exclude the Indians from the country of their forefathers. Perceiving his opportunity in the foolish security of the English and in their exposed situation, he determined to annihilate them in one ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... weep, Francesca? That God's will is not accomplished, or that your own is thwarted? Nothing but sin can mar the first, and in this your trial there is not the least shade of sin. As to your own will, bend, break, annihilate it, my child, and take courage. Have but one thought—the good pleasure, the sweet will of God; submit yourself to His Providence. Lay down your wishes as an oblation on His altar; give up that highest place which you had justly coveted; take the lower one which He now appoints you; and if ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton

... state, Compleat in all the parts of endless misery, And worse ten thousand times than not to BE! Could but the Damn'd the immortal law repeal, And Devils dye, there'd be an end of Hell; Could they that thing call'd Being annihilate, There'd be no sorrows in a future state; The Wretch, whose crimes had shut him out on high, Could be reveng'd on God himself and die; Job's Wife was in the right, and always we Might end by death all human misery, ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... into womanhood and her form had that exquisite roundness and grace which it is the particular function of fashion to annihilate. If I held her closely, I think all bachelors will agree that it was because this very roundness made her heavy; if I did not put her down immediately I reached Maitland's room, it is because, as a doctor of medicine, I have my own ideas as to how a couch should ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... was not really noting anything down, but only going over the letters of his notes with a pen, having seen the procureur and leading advocates, after putting a clever question, make a note, with which, later on, to annihilate their adversaries. ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... we were engaged, when your kings and your priests came to interrupt our labors.... Kings and priests! you may yet for awhile suspend the solemn publication of the laws of nature; but it is no longer in your power to annihilate or ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts

... since she was but a corpse, and he was about to bid farewell to the life of the world? As the doctors condemned her, as she would never be woman, nor wife, nor mother, he, on his side, might well renounce manhood, and annihilate himself, dedicate himself to God, to whom his mother gave him. And he still felt within him the soft bitterness of that last interview: Marie smiling painfully at memory of their childish play and prattle, and speaking to him of the happiness which he would ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... under him, looked down and found himself to be entirely filled with the wish to let go and to drown in these waters. A frightening emptiness was reflected back at him by the water, answering to the terrible emptiness in his soul. Yes, he had reached the end. There was nothing left for him, except to annihilate himself, except to smash the failure into which he had shaped his life, to throw it away, before the feet of mockingly laughing gods. This was the great vomiting he had longed for: death, the smashing to bits of the form he hated! Let him be food for fishes, this dog Siddhartha, ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse

... office. The other competition had not been won. If people said that he had been influenced by Lucas's uniform, well, they must say it. They would not say it for more than a few days. After a few days the one interesting fact would be that he had joined. By such simple and curt arguments did he annihilate the once overwhelming reasons against ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... thing?"—Collier's Antoninus, p. 63. "Thou shalt be required to go to God, to die, and give up your account."—BARNES'S NOTES: on Luke, xii, 20. "And canst thou expect to behold the resplendent glory of the Creator? would not such a sight annihilate you?"—Milton. "If the prophet had commanded thee to do some great thing, would you have refused?"—Common School Journal, i, 80. "Art thou a penitent? Evince your sincerity by bringing forth fruits meet for repentance."—Christian's Vade-Mecum, p. 117. "I will call thee my ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... very easily assassinate the man who knew him to be guilty of a petty theft, but he could fling him into the mire and annihilate him so completely that his word and testimony would count for nothing. For a long time revenge had germinated in his heart without budding; for the men who hate most are usually those who have little time in Paris to ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... inferiority. Acting upon this impression, they very naturally employed the power with which they were now invested to bring down the established church to the same level on which they themselves stood; to annihilate all the rights, powers, and privileges which belonged to its members; and, by depriving it of all support from the funds of the state, convert it into a self-constituted religious community. Their great objects were to obtain those privileges from which they were excluded, and to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... turbulence of the chief or petty king and of his people bring them into hostile conflict with other tribes or petty states; and when victorious, they appropriate the conquered territory, and annihilate, enslave, or extend their rule over the vanquished people. This warlike encroachment and increase of power alarm other states, and they form confederacies or leagues more or less intimate and permanent for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Ross had little ingenuity in the line of excuses or she would never have offered such a threadbare one as that. I wanted the chance to annihilate her and here it was. I called up Bentonville and asked if Miss Ross was there. She was, and I said, "Isn't it possible for you to invent a better excuse than 'lunch' for your failure to answer last night, ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... intercourse with these natives sustained a shock, which at first threatened to annihilate it, but which fortunately ended, as it began, in smoke. One of the officers used a common flint and steel, in order to procure a light for his cigar; at this new mode of procuring fire all eyes were open—for doubtless they procure it only by means of friction—but ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... make a point of calling upon them. Of course time will only allow of the interchange of the compliments of the season, where so much social duty has to be performed in one brief day, but this pleasant custom tends to keep up old acquaintanceships and annihilate old feuds. It is gratifying to observe that any known deviation from the rules of morality is punished with exclusion from the houses of those who are considered the leaders of New York society; it is also very pleasing to see that to the best circles in New York wealth alone is not a passport. ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... were now ready for further acts of independence. It was likewise to be remembered that in the complete rout and ruin of the party a great obstacle to anti-slavery progress had been removed. The slave-holders at once recognized this fact. They had aimed to defeat the party, not to annihilate it. They saw clearly what slavery needed was two pretty evenly divided parties, pitted against each other on economic issues, so that under cover of their strife it could be allowed to have its way; and they were justly alarmed at the prospect of a new movement, having its action upon moral ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian

... both evil and good; that evil is as real as goodness, and more powerful. This belief has not one quality of truth or good. It is either ignorant or malicious. The malicious form of animal magnetism ultimates in moral idiocy. The truths of immortal mind sustain man; and they annihilate the fables and mortal mind, whose flimsy and gaudy pretensions, like silly moths, singe their own wings and fall into dust. In reality there is no mortal mind, and consequently no transference of mortal thought and will-power." Page ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... as an irrelevant factor in the purposes of common life? Why, reverence is the very clue to fruitful, practical living. Reverence is creative of hope; nay, a more definite emphasis can be given to the assertion; reverence is a constituent of hope. Annihilate reverence, and life loses its fine sensitiveness, and when sensitiveness goes out of a life the hope that remains is only a flippant rashness, a thoughtless impetuosity, the careless onrush of the kine, and not a ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various

... projection, which nearly surrounded the orifice of the ventricle; the valves themselves were thickened, and one of them was smaller than the other. The semilunar valves of the aorta were lessened in size, and somewhat thickened. One of them was ossified sufficiently to annihilate its valvular function; the others were slightly. The aorta under the valves was semicartilaginous, ossified in one small spot, roughened by fleshlike prominences in others, entirely deprived of the smoothness ...
— Cases of Organic Diseases of the Heart • John Collins Warren

... by its contents. The terrified fugitive, owing his safety to a trick, and slavering like an idiot in the hands of his rude captors, had an inner life of trust strong enough to hold his mortal terror in check, though not to annihilate it. The psalm is far in advance of the conduct—is it so unusual a circumstance as to occasion surprise, that lofty and sincere utterances of faith and submission should co-exist with the opposite feelings? Instead of taking the contrast between ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren

... conclusion," said Bertrand, pausing to put sirup on Jamie's cakes, after repeated demands therefor. "If the cause be evil, it follows that to annihilate the cause—wipe it out of ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... kneeling, with uplifted arms, imploring for mercy. "Sire, annihilate me with your anger, but do not crush me with ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach

... think so. Redeemed saints do not think so. The more entire the consecration, the more perfect the bliss. In heaven devotement is perfect, and joy of course unalloyed. Blot out this spirit of consecration, you blot out all true happiness on earth; you annihilate heaven. ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble

... how the Boers had planned to annihilate him and his small party, he became very indignant at what he called "the clumsy European method of always revealing ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... to take up the doctrine of the resurrection, and just show the world what a fraud it was, while Lord Lyttleton was going to take up the conversion of Saul, and just show the folly of it. These men were going to annihilate that doctrine and that incident of the gospel. A Frenchman said it took twelve fishermen to build up Christ's religion, but one Frenchman pulled it down. From Calvary this doctrine rolled along the stream of time, through the eighteen hundred ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody

... consequences of slander," says the Rev. F. W. Robertson; "you may publicly prove its falsehood, you may sift every atom, explain and annihilate it, and yet, years after you had thought that all had been disposed of for ever, the mention of a name wakes up associations in the mind of some one who heard it, but never heard or never attended to the refutation, or who has only a vague and confused ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... went out for a walk beyond the town limits to excogitate the final touches for some sentences that were to annihilate the infidel Frenchman. Suddenly he fell prey to a disquiet that almost amounted to physical distress. He turned over in his mind the life he had been leading for the last three months. It had grown wearisomely familiar—the morning walks into the country, the evenings spent in gambling for petty ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler

... by the prejudices of past generations, weighed down by the bigotry of human creeds, educated in the schools of an effete philosophy, struggling through the darkness and gloom which surrounded him, when as a persecutor he sought to annihilate the disciples of a new faith, there came this vision into his life; there dawned the electric light of a great truth, which found beneath the hatred and pride and passion which filled his life and heart, the divine ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... his hand over his forehead. "The deuce!" he said. "That is logic perhaps. Still, sir, I think it is rather hardy in you to double America and annihilate ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... notice it; indeed, several of the Fractions were so incensed at the bold threat that two or three of them called out, "Shoot him at sunrise!" The Greatest Common Divisor, however, merely gave him a savage and contemptuous glance over his tear-mug, as much as to say that he would annihilate him when ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker

... satisfied by words and prone to believe. But he knew that Paul Montague was attached to her, and that it was Paul's intention to cling to his love. Sorrowfully looking forward through the vista of future years, he thought he saw that Henrietta would become Paul's wife. Were it so, what should he do? Annihilate himself as far as all personal happiness in the world was concerned, and look solely to their happiness, their prosperity, and their joys? Be as it were a beneficent old fairy to them, though the agony of his own disappointment ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... utterance of these last words Bobinette glanced at Captain Brocq as if she would annihilate him: the remembrance of their first meeting seemed more odious to her ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... help me." He not only believes in The Philosopher's Stone; he says he is on the trace of some explosive compound so terrifically destructive in its effect, that it will make war impossible. He declares that he will annihilate time and space by means of electricity; and that he will develop steam as a motive power, until travelers can rush over the whole habitable globe at the rate of a ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins

... night and those who saw it believed, at first, that it was a meteor. Instead of streaking away into oblivion, however, it became larger and larger, until it seemed as though some vagrant, blazing star was about to plunge into the earth and annihilate the planet and every vestige of life upon it. But then it drew slowly to a stop high up in the atmosphere, where it remained motionless, glowing white and incandescent against the Stygian background of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various

... of the taste for what is beautiful; a taste for the sublime we should be cautious in cultivating. Obscurity and terror are two of the grand sources of the sublime; analyze the feeling, examine accurately the object which creates the emotion, and you dissipate the illusion, you annihilate the pleasure. ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth

... three days ago. May they all be as long-lived and as happy as they are now sweet and amiable! This sweet place is beautiful even yet, though no longer of a beauty young and blooming, such as you left it; but the character Of the prospect is so 'grand that winter cannot annihilate its charms, though it greatly diminishes them. The variety of the grounds, and the striking form of the hills, always afford something new to observe, and contain something lasting to admire. Were 1, however, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... at the exponent of such heresy, and was about to annihilate her with sarcasm, when he suddenly changed his mind. After all, she was right. It was what she called "the rough" that helped to make her voice unlike the voices ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward

... disappearing and a new one making its way cannot realize the tragedy of life, for at such times the old is still sufficiently strong to resist the assaults of the new, and the latter, though growing, is not yet strong enough to annihilate that world on the ruins of which alone it will be able to prosper. Men are then called upon to solve insoluble problems and to attempt enterprises which are both necessary and impossible. There is confusion everywhere, in the mind ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero

... shouted and sang songs descriptive of the deeds they had performed, or of those they intended to do, referring sometimes to their prowess in having captured a party of white men, who had not ventured to strike a blow for freedom; while they boasted especially of the way they intended to annihilate Umbulazi and his followers. Some gave way to their exuberant spirits by leaping and dancing in a fashion which offered a curious contrast to the march of a regiment of life guards. They shrieked, they quivered ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston

... "Armament of Mechanizers" and Unbelievers, threatening to strip us bare! "The World," says he, "as it needs must, is under a process of devastation and waste, which, whether by silent assiduous corrosion, or open quicker combustion, as the case chances, will effectually enough annihilate the past Forms of Society; replace them with what it may. For the present, it is contemplated that when man's whole Spiritual Interests are once divested, these innumerable stript-off Garments shall mostly be burnt; but the sounder Rags among ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... source of all existence? Hamilton maintains that it is a mere abstraction, and cannot be so identified; that, far from being "a name of God," it is a name of nothing at all. "By abstraction," he says, "we annihilate the object, and by abstraction we annihilate the subject of consciousness. But what remains? Nothing." When we attempt to conceive it as a reality, we ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel

... God help my wife!" says Colonel Elijah Williams, who rides at Sedgwick's side. Advance or retreat is alike impossible and the forthcoming volley can not fail to annihilate them. ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... body performed such actions was such, that he would have gone to the Senate upon such a day and at such an hour, that he would have spoken there such and such words, etc., though God had willed to annihilate his soul the next day after it was created. We must say that this moving power did change and modify itself exactly according to the volubility of the thoughts of that ambitious man, and that it was affected precisely in a certain manner rather than in another, because the soul of Caesar ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... in the State, wants to annihilate it entirely. It holds that the task of the State has always been to oppress the country in the interests of one class. So long as there are classes in society which seek supremacy, the mastery, there must be a State. But as soon as classes are eliminated the State will have no justification ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... first place, the Secretary of the Treasury has now the power, under the Act of March 3, 1865, to exchange any securities of the Government which bear interest for any other securities which bear interest. In the second place, he has the power to call in, to cancel, to annihilate, so that it shall never go out again, every particle of currency issued prior to June 30,1864; and the truth is, that substantially if not literally the whole of the currency was issued previous to that time." . . . "Only one power," said Mr. Conkling, "remains to be conferred upon him; and ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... thither for safety. Although, to make certain of the Sangleys of the parian, their merchants had been asked to come into the city, and bring their property, they did not dare to do so; for they always thought that the enemy would take the city because of their great force of numbers, and annihilate the Spaniards, and they would all be in danger. Consequently they preferred to remain in their parian, in order to join the victorious side. Don Luys Dasmarinas thought it advisable to go in search of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair

... most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one's house. A man's house is his castle; and whilst he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle. This writ, if it should be declared legal, would totally annihilate this privilege. Custom-house officers may enter our houses when they please; we are commanded to permit their entry. Their menial servants may enter, may break locks, bars, and every thing in their way; and whether they break through malice or revenge, no man, no court, can inquire. ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath

... the abhorrence of nature, the opprobrium of the human species and the earth can only be freed from an insupportable burthen by your being exterminated."[81] The diction is so elaborately dignified that the contempt which was meant almost to annihilate Caleb Williams, lies effectually concealed behind a blinding veil of rhetoric. When he has leisure to adorn, he translates the simplest, most obvious reflections into the "jargon" of political philosophy, but, driven impetuously ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... one, and he who tries to cast off the oppression which hinders him from following that which is good is trying to cast off himself. The desperate problem that fronts every effort at self-emendation has two bristling impossibilities in it: one, how to annihilate the past; one, how to extirpate the evil that is part of my very self, and yet to keep the self entire. The very terms of the problem show it to be insoluble, and the climax of all honest efforts at making a clean thing of an unclean by means within reach ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... not only instructive, but positively fascinating,—his adroitness in retrieving a mistake, or his sagacity in abandoning, in season, an indefensible position,—the lofty and indignant scorn with which he sometimes condescends to annihilate an insolent adversary, or the royal courtesy of his occasional compliments. But who shall be able to describe those attributes of his eloquence which address themselves only to the ear and eye: that clear, resonant voice, never sinking into an inaudible whisper, and never ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... by any being made in the image of God. The lord of life died that his father's children might grow perfect in love—might love their brothers and sisters as he loved them: is it to this end that they must cease to know one another? To annihilate the past of our earthly embodiment, would be to crush under the heel of an iron fate the very idea ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald

... conscious of his powerlessness to conquer fate, and conscious of his weakness in face of the mysterious "some one in grey," confounds in the same malediction God, Satan, Fatality, and Life, who have united to annihilate him. ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... with an event that crushed the industry in Paris. Just when design and execution were at their highest excellence, and production was prolific, political events began to annihilate the trade. The English King, Henry V, crossed the Channel and occupied Paris in 1422. Thus, under the oppression of the invaders, the art of tapestry was discouraged and fell by the way, not to rise lustily again in Paris for two ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... between gangs of knaves associated for the mere purpose of robbing the public, and confederacies of honorable men for the promotion of great public objects. Nor had he the sagacity to perceive that the strenuous efforts which he made to annihilate all parties tended only to establish the ascendency of one party, and that the basest and most hateful ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... will be avenged with hideous hate By Iroquois, swift to annihilate His vile detested captors, that now flaunt Their war clubs in his face with sneer and taunt, Not thinking, soon that reeking, red, and raw, Their scalps will deck ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... loves to show his sovereignty in much of that, and therefore he changes it in men and upon men as he pleaseth. Yet he hath condescended to limit and bound himself by his word, and in this to show his faithfulness. And therefore, though heaven and earth should pass away,—though he should annihilate this world, and create new ones,—yet "not one jot of his word shall fail." The earth is established sure, though it hath no foundation, for the word of his command supports it, and yet a believer's ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... forward each wing as our cavalry advance, and threatens to annihilate them as they pass on. Turning a little to their left so as to meet the Russian right the Greys rush on with a cheer that thrills to every heart—the wild shout of the Enniskilleners rises through the air at the same instant. As lightning flashes through a cloud the ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... exercising ecclesiastical authority as the princes of the nations exercise theirs, without rule and without measure; the other is the enterprise of those who, in order to correct its abuses, have desired to annihilate authority, who have denied that supreme power rests in the Church, who have given this power to the multitude, who have changed the entire ecclesiastical order in destroying the monarchy which God placed there, to substitute for it democracy or aristocracy, who have arrived, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... social forces in the case I am far more disposed to assert than to question. What we are to inquire, however, is not whether social forces contribute to this result, but whether they are such forces as supersede and annihilate individual will. Let ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... contrary, were they to adopt offensive tactics, not only would every Spaniard in the island take up arms against them, but if necessary they would send for help to the neighboring islands, and would assemble a force sufficient thoroughly to search the woods, and to annihilate them. ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty

... especial measures to guard the coasts of Ireland, thus enabling the French to get clear away to the Mediterranean. With bolder tactics they should have been able to reduce the new British possession, Minorca, or annihilate the small force blockading Malta. The relief felt at Dublin Castle, on hearing of Bruix' southward voyage, appears in Beresford's letter of 15th May, in which he refers to the revival of loyalty and the terrible number of hangings by courts martial: "We consider ourselves as safe from the French ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... (pleasantly disguised under the pretence of its being an economical wish to produce her own honey), lived near the watering-place of Budmouth-Regis, ten miles off, and the business of transporting the hives thither would occupy the whole day, and to some extent annihilate the vacant time between this evening and the coming Sunday. The best spring-cart was washed throughout, the axles oiled, and the bees placed therein ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy

... many other things to think of, and there is evidence to show that they viewed with satisfaction the placing of that admirable little force in a situation where they hoped that they could cut it off and annihilate it. That they were disappointed in this hope was due not a little to the activity and efficiency of the newest arm, numbering about a thousand, all told, the ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... a drowned ass, constitutionally put "at the top of affairs," popular indignation will infallibly accumulate upon it; one day, the popular lightning, descending forked and horrible from the black air, will annihilate said supreme carcass, and smite it home to its native ooze again!—Your Lordship, this is too true, though irreverently spoken: indeed one knows not how to speak of it; and to me it is infinitely sad and miserable, spoken or not!—Unless perhaps the Voluntary Principle ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... the relation of the earth as existing to-day, life would again be developed, if we were in a condition instantaneously to annihilate all life; yet the same results would not be produced as in the original period, because the needed materials are no longer present in the mighty masses, nor in the requisite fluid and gaseous conditions ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various

... women of failing to come up to the level of the day. "If you could have finished the war with your needles," she chided them, "it would have been finished long ago, but stitching does not crush rebellion, does not annihilate treason...." ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz

... of a fairy tale rarely is, and never should be, anything but happy. For this reason I have always disliked—and though some of the mighty have left their calm seats and endeavoured to annihilate me for it, I still continue to dislike—that old favourite of some part of the public, The Yellow Dwarf. That detestable creature (who does not even amuse me) had no business to triumph; and, what is more, I don't believe he did. Not ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... Barchester close! what a connection for even the episcopal palace! The bishop, in his simple mind, felt no doubt that John Bold, had he so much power, would shut up all cathedrals, and probably all parish churches; distribute all tithes among Methodists, Baptists, and other savage tribes; utterly annihilate the sacred bench, and make shovel hats and lawn sleeves as illegal as cowls, sandals, and sackcloth! Here was a nice man to be initiated into the comfortable arcana of ecclesiastical snuggeries; one who doubted the integrity of parsons, and ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope

... of them. A sovereign may delegate his powers to be exercised by as many agents as he may think proper, under such conditions and with such limitations as he may impose; but to surrender any portion of his sovereignty to another is to annihilate the whole. The Senator from Delaware (Mr. Clayton) calls this metaphysical reasoning, which he says he cannot comprehend. If by metaphysics he means that scholastic refinement which makes distinctions without difference, no one can hold it in more utter contempt than I do; but if, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... regard his brilliant exploit as a matter of little consequence, for he declares that you had discovered, or would have discovered, my plan to annihilate your boarders." ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... just existed abroad, the great estates enjoyed by his father were being subjected to pillage by Cromwell's soldiers, or sold for pitiful sums by the Commissioners appointed by the Parliament to break up and annihilate many of the old properties in England. Burleigh-on-the-Hill, the stately seat on which the first duke had lavished thousands, had been taken by the Roundheads. It was so large, and presented so long a line ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... Now the reason why none can, to the full, know the horrible nature of sin, is because none, to the full, can know the blessed nature of the blessed God. For sin is the opposite to God. There is nothing that seeketh absolutely, and in its own nature to overcome, and to annihilate God, but sin, and sin doth so. Sin is worse than the devil; he therefore that is more afraid of the devil than of sin, knows not the badness of sin as he ought; nor but little of the love of Jesus Christ. He that knows not what sin would have done to the world, had not Christ stepped betwixt those ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... knows the world, and books, and himself, and uses the positive degree; never shrieks, or protests, or prays; no weakness, no convulsion, no superlative; does not wish to jump out of his skin, or play any antics, or annihilate space or time; but is stout and solid; tastes every moment of the day; likes pain, because it makes him feel himself, and realize things; as we pinch ourselves to know that we are awake. He keeps the ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... a company of Mexican soldiers were drawn up with a field piece, making ready to annihilate the little American company, as they could do without the slightest difficulty before the gallant sailors could land and make a charge. Here was a dilemma indeed. Nothing could extricate the boat and its crew ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis

... improvements to be effected in the construction of these instruments. Thus the curious properties which steel combined with nickel—so admirably studied by M.Ch.Ed. Guillaume—exhibits in the matter of dilatation are now utilized so as to almost completely annihilate the influence ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare

... of the subject not to be compared in general interest with his earlier paper, which is as fresh to-day as when it was written. Mr. Gallatin condemned paper currency as an artificial stimulus, and the ultimate object of his essays was to annihilate what he termed the "dangerous instrument." He admitted its utility and convenience, when used with great sobriety, but he deprecated its tendency to degenerate into a depreciated and irredeemable currency. This tendency ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... system, being less an invention than an evolution, had from the labors of Prof. Joseph Henry, in Albany, and of Wheatstone, of England, become, by Morse's invention of the dot-and-line alphabet, a far-off writer by which men could annihilate time and distance. One of the first to experiment with the new power—old as eternity, but only slowly revealed to man—was Carleton's brother-in-law, Prof. Moses G. Farmer, whose services to science have never ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis

... contemplate with wonder the genius of Rivarol. But we have much to do. We must ship to St. Joseph the vast amount of material to be employed in the construction of the Tachypomp. We must engage a small army of workmen to effect that construction, for we are to annihilate time and space. Perhaps you had better ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various

... made war on that man. I hated Horace Endicott as a weak fool. He had fallen lowest of all his honest, able, stern race. I beat him first into hiding, then into slavery, and at last into annihilation. I studied to annihilate him, and I did it by raising Arthur Dillon in his place. I am now Arthur Dillon. I think, feel, act, speak, dream like that Arthur Dillon which I first imagined. When you knew me first, Honora, I was playing a part. I am no longer acting. ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... 1862, was one of the most terrific of the many great battles of the great Civil war. It has been likened to the battle of Waterloo. Napoleon sought to destroy the army of Wellington before a junction could be made with Blucher. Johnston and Beauregard undertook to annihilate the Army of the Tennessee, under Gen. Grant, before the Army of the Cumberland, under Buell, could come to his assistance. At the second battle of Bull Run Gen. Pope claimed that Porter was within sound of his guns, yet he remained inactive. At Pittsburg Landing it was claimed by military men ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore

... proudly. She wished to annihilate this newly-created countess with her withering contempt. But the king, who perceived the signs of a coming storm upon his mother's brow, determined to prevent this outbreak. It wounded his noble and generous soul to see a poor, defenceless woman tormented ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... the existence of an under-current, which runs from the poles towards the equator: it also proves that the saline substances which alter the specific gravity of the water, are distributed in the ocean, so as not to annihilate the effect produced ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... I exclaimed, walking homeward; "let him mock me for my weak and childish notions, as he calls them, and attempt to be facetious at the expense of all that is holy, and good, and consolatory in life. Let him attempt it, and I will annihilate him with a word!" When, however, I grew more collected, I began to understand how, by such proceeding, I might shoot very wide of my mark, and give my friend an advantage after all. He had explained his presence at the church to his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... a plank I felt that I might lose all control and leap up and brain him with the heavy bottle in my grasp. I had an insane desire to spring at his throat and throttle his infamous bravado, tumble him overboard and annihilate the last vestige ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... far enough, sir," said Captain de Banyan, stepping between Somers and his assailant. "Lieutenant Somers is my friend; and, if you put the weight of your little finger upon him, I'll annihilate you quicker than I did a certain Austrian field-marshal at the battle of Solferino. Gentlemen, permit me to apologize for my inexperienced friend if he has ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic

... never been contemplated by me, as an object of the war, to make a permanent conquest of the Republic of Mexico or to annihilate her separate existence as an independent nation. On the contrary, it has ever been my desire that she should maintain her nationality, and under a good government adapted to her condition be a free, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... independent of them, and pretends to no authority by which he can alter the destiny which consigns them to misery or happiness. They drift to their doom by the same law by which they drifted across the path of his vision. Individually, he abhors Hollingsworth, and would like to annihilate Westervelt, yet he allows the superb Zenobia to be their victim; and if his readers object that the effect of the whole representation is painful, he would doubtless agree with them, but profess his incapacity honestly to alter a sentence. He professes to tell the story as it was revealed to him; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... broken regiments and the magazines that had been lost in spite of them, had Washington possessed but a few fresh troops. The English general had been out-manoeuvred, his best brigade cut to pieces, and the army he had thought to annihilate was safe among the ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... grandeur cast a lengthened shadow across the face of northern Europe. In some regards this revolution stands pre-eminent above all others known in history. Few political upheavals have been more sudden, and few, if any, have been more complete. Seven years was all Gustavus needed to annihilate the ancient constitution, and fashion another structure of an absolutely new design. The Cabinet, at one time the autocrat of Sweden, was now a mere puppet in the monarch's hand. Under the guise of leader ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson



Words linked to "Annihilate" :   annihilator, eradicate, eliminate, kill, annihilation, decimate, annihilative, wipe out, carry off



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