wipe out

/waɪp aʊt/

/waɪp aʊt/

Other forms: wiped out; wiping out; wipes out

To wipe out is to completely deplete or use up. If you wipe out your grandmother's entire batch of brownies, it means that you eat every single last one of them.

You might wipe out your life's savings gambling in Las Vegas, or — more positively — wipe out your credit card debt by paying a little each month for a year. In either case, you've erased or eliminated something. Sometimes wipe out is used to describe a truly terrible event, as when a disease wipes out a country's population of songbirds.

Definitions of wipe out

1. verb

   use up (resources or materials)
   synonyms: consume, deplete, eat, eat up, exhaust, run through, use up

   occupy, take, use up

   require (time or space)

   types:

   run out

   exhaust the supply of

   drain

   deplete of resources

   indulge, luxuriate

   enjoy to excess

   burn, burn off, burn up

   use up (energy)

   spend

   spend completely

   exhaust, play out, run down, sap, tire

   deplete

   surfeit

   indulge (one's appetite) to satiety

   overspend

   spend more than available of (a budget)

   underspend

   spend less than the whole of (a budget, for example)

   type of:

   drop, expend, spend

   pay out
2. verb

   eliminate completely and without a trace
   “The old values have been wiped out”

   synonyms: sweep away

   type of:

   destroy, destruct

   do away with, cause the destruction or undoing of
3. verb

   mark for deletion, rub off, or erase
   synonyms: kill, obliterate

   type of:

   take away, take out

   take out or remove
4. verb

   remove from memory or existence
   synonyms: erase

   type of:

   kill

   cause to die; put to death, usually intentionally or knowingly
5. verb

   wipe out the effect of something
   synonyms: cancel out

   type of:

   do away with, eliminate, extinguish, get rid of

   terminate, end, or take out
6. verb

   kill in large numbers
   “the plague wiped out an entire population”

   synonyms: annihilate, carry off, decimate, eliminate, eradicate, extinguish

   decimate

   kill one in every ten, as of mutineers in Roman armies

   type of:

   kill

   cause to die; put to death, usually intentionally or knowingly