Other forms: eliminated, eliminating, eliminates
To eliminate is to remove something completely, leaving nothing behind. Eliminate waste, eliminate the risk, eliminated in the first round.
In sport and competitions it means to knock out: eliminated from the tournament. In investigation, eliminate somebody from enquiries is the standard police phrase for ruling them out. In mathematics, eliminating a variable is a named technique. Note elimination; and that eliminate is also a euphemism for killing, chiefly in thrillers, which is one reason it sounds colder than remove.
1verbeliminateTo remove something completely.
“The new filter eliminates almost all bacteria from the water.”
2verbknockTo knock somebody out of a competition.
“They were eliminated in the first round for the third year running.”
eliminate is a removing.
Latin eliminare is ex-, out, plus limen, a threshold — to put out of doors. Eliminating something is literally throwing it over the doorstep, which is more physical than the modern uses suggest.
Latin
ēlīminātus
English, today
eliminate
Built from
Latin ēlīminātus, perfect passive participle of ēlīminō (“to turn out of doors, banish”), from ē- + līmen + -ō (see -ate), akin to Latin līmes (“a boundary”); see also English limit and limen.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA