Other forms: eradicated, eradicating, eradicates
To eradicate is to destroy something completely and for good. Eradicate poverty, eradicate the disease, eradicated from the wild.
The completeness is what distinguishes it from reduce, and in public health eradication has a strict meaning: zero cases worldwide, permanently, with no further intervention needed. Only smallpox and rinderpest have been eradicated. Note eradication; and that the Latin means to root out, from radix, a root, which also gives radish and radical.
1verberadicateTo destroy something completely and for good.
“The city is trying to eradicate rats from the old market.”
eradicate is a complete destroying.
Latin eradicare is ex plus radix, a root — to root out. Radish, radical and race in the sense of a root stock come from the same root.
Proto-Indo-European
*wréh₂ds
Latin
ērādīcātus
Middle English
eradicaten — to eradicate
English, today
eradicate
Built from
From Middle English eradicaten (“to eradicate”), from eradicat(e) + -en, borrowed from Latin ērādīcātus, the perfect passive participle of ērādīcō (“to uproot, root out; to anihilate, eradicate”), from ex- (“out”) + rādīx (“root”) + -ō. See also radish.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA