Other forms: abolished, abolishing, abolishes
To abolish is to officially end a law or practice forever. Abolish slavery, abolish the tax, calls to abolish it.
It takes systems and institutions rather than things — you abolish a practice, not an object — and it means ending by decision rather than by decay. The abolition of the slave trade is the use that defined the word in English. Note abolition, abolitionist; and that the Latin means to check the growth of something.
1verbabolishTo officially end a law or practice forever.
“Many countries abolished the death penalty during the last century.”
abolish is an official ending.
Latin abolere means to destroy or check the growth of. The French abolir carried it into English.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂el- (grow)
Latin
aboleo — to retard, check the growth of, (and by extension) destroy, abolish
Middle French
aboliss-
Middle English
abolisshen
English, today
abolish
Built from
From late Middle English abolisshen, from Middle French aboliss-, extended stem of abolir, from Latin aboleo (“to retard, check the growth of, (and by extension) destroy, abolish”), and inchoative abolesco (“to wither, vanish, cease”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA