the.com/extermination
The deliberate destruction of every member of a group, an atrocity that ends lives and erases futures.
means The complete and deliberate destruction of every member of a group, down to the last one.
from From Latin exterminare — ex- 'out, beyond' plus terminus 'boundary, limit' — originally meaning to drive someone out past the border, to banish them beyond the boundary stones. The sense curdled over time from 'expel past the limit' to 'wipe out entirely,' as if banishment's logical endpoint were annihilation.
- root meaning
- latin for driving beyond the boundary
- vs killing
- implies total eradication, not just one death
- pest control
- the only industry proud of the word
- euphemism risk
- history shows it sanitizes atrocity disturbingly well