Adjective: obliterate
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
Perifrastic
| Comparative | more obliterate |
| Superlative | most obliterate |
Sample Sentences
-
[G]o to the herald's office, […] and thou shalt find in that office as many records of attainted families, and escheated families, and impoverished and forgotten, and obliterate families, as of families newly erected and presently celebrated. [1628 January 4 (date delivered; Gregorian calendar), John Donne, “Sermon V. Preached at St. Paul’s on Christmas-Day, 1627.”, in Henry Alford, editor, The Works of John Donne, D.D., […], volume I, London: John W[illiam] Parker, […], published 1839, →OCLC, page 90:]
-
It may maintain a bright conjecture, againſt a ruſty Truth: a legible poſſeſſion, againſt an obliterate Claime: […] [1647, Theodore de la Guard [pseudonym; Nathaniel Ward], The Simple Cobler of Aggawam in America. […], London: […] J[ohn] D[ever] & R[obert] I[bbitson] for Stephen Bowtell, […], →OCLC, page 32:]
-
And they being in a capacity to forget by reaſon of deſuetude, it vvill be a nevv pleaſure to them to recall to minde their almoſt obliterate ſpeculations. [1659, Henry More, chapter IV, in The Immortality of the Soul, so Farre Forth as It is Demonstrable from the Knowledge of Nature and the Light of Reason, London: […] J[ames] Flesher, for William Morden […], →OCLC, book III, paragraph 9, page 374:]
-
[…] then how swiftly and how wonderfully, he reads all the obscurest and most obliterate inscriptions he finds in his memory; […] [1852, Herman Melville, Pierre; or The Ambiguities:]
Adjectives inflected like obliterate
priest-ridden,
unreposed,
evadible,
dissentious,
dissentient,
unforesighted,
egocentrical,
unephemeral,
unennobling,
mensuralist,
flocculent,
unseductive,
whoopsy,
whooshy,
surrogate,
Nicodian,
unrepaired,
prismatoidal,
renorenal,
unseducible, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
Etymology
Learned borrowing from Latin obliterātus (see more at Etymology 1 and -ate (adjective-forming suffix, of participial origin)).