wipe out

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wipe out (third-person singular simple present wipes out, present participle wiping out, simple past and past participle wiped out)

1. (transitive) To destroy (especially, a large number of people or things); to obliterate.

   a tornado that nearly wiped out an entire town

   • 1999, “Episode I: The Phantom Menace”, in Star Wars:

     Darth Sidious: Wipe them out. All of them.

   • 2018 October 17, Drachinifel, 33:41 from the start, in Last Ride of the High Seas Fleet - Battle of Texel 1918‎, archived from the original on 4 August 2022:

     Now, that, admittedly, did do an awful lot more damage (the 5th and 6th were almost completely wiped out), but the High Seas Fleet was, in turn, almost completely wiped out (in fact, basically was wiped out, to a man) by the oncoming rest of the British Grand Fleet, and it was decided by everybody that this kind of, like, suicidal, completely suicidal, charge was probably a bit out of character for Hipper, and so we didn't take that particular one into account.

2. (transitive) To physically erase (writing, computer data, etc.).

   nearly a year's worth of database records wiped out by disk failure coupled with lack of backups

3. (transitive) To do away with; to cause to disappear.

   trying to wipe out hunger and alleviate despair

   • 2012 April 23, Angelique Chrisafis, “François Hollande on top but far right scores record result in French election”, in the Guardian‎:

     The leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who had dominated headlines in recent weeks with rousing open-air rallies against capitalism, took about 11% and failed in his ultimate aim of beating Le Pen and wiping out the extreme right.

4. (transitive, informal) To exhaust (someone); to tire (them) out.

   An hour of snow shoveling kind of wiped me out more than I expected.

   • 2014, Sandra Gutierrez, The Way Life Used To Be, page 135:

     I tried to force myself to sound happy even though I was exhausted. Four solid days of finals and studying for them had wiped me out.

5. (transitive, informal) To bankrupt (a person or company); to empty (a bank account); to erase (a bank balance).

   Coordinate terms: clean out, clear out

   They tried hard to hang on, but the Great Depression wiped them out.

   Unexpected big-ticket expenses wiped out his bank balance.

6. (intransitive) To crash; to fall over or fall off (especially in board sports such as surfing, skateboarding, etc.).

   shot into the half-pipe but then wiped out

   A massive wave caused him to wipe out.

7. (surfing, transitive) To knock (a surfer) off their board.

   A massive wave wiped him out.

• See also Thesaurus:destroy

wipe out (plural wipe outs)

1. Nonstandard spelling of wipeout (nonstandard but widespread).