Other forms: liquidated, liquidating, liquidates
To liquidate is to turn assets into money, or to close a business down. Liquidate the assets, the company was liquidated, forced to liquidate.
In insolvency it means winding a company up and selling everything to pay creditors in a set order, with shareholders last. Liquidating an investment means selling it for cash. The word also means to kill, which came from Soviet and Nazi usage in the 1920s and 1930s and remains chilling. Note liquidator; liquidity, meaning how easily an asset becomes cash.
1verbliquidateTo turn assets into money, or to close a business down.
“The bankrupt company was forced to liquidate its assets to pay back its debts.”
2verbkillTo kill, in political usage.
“The dictator's secret police liquidated anyone suspected of disloyalty.”
liquidate is a converting or winding up.
Latin liquidare means to make clear or melt, from liquidus, fluid. Liquid, liquor and liquidity come from the same fluidity, and clearing a debt was making it clear.
Proto-Indo-European
*wleykʷ-
Latin
liquidātus — liquid; clear
English, today
liquidate
Built from
Latin liquidātus (“liquid; clear”) + English -ate. Liquidātus is the perfect passive participle of liquidō (“to turn into a liquid, melt; to make clear”), from Latin liquidus (“fluid, liquid; clear, transparent”) + -ō; while liquidus is from liqueō (“to be fluid or liquid; to be clear or transparent”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European wleykʷ- (“to make wet; moist”)) + -idus. by surface analysis, liquid + -ate. kill (“to kill; to abolish or eliminate”) is a Russian ликвиди́ровать; while business tr and business intr (business-related senses) were influenced by French liquider and Italian liquidare, all ultimately from Latin liquidus (see above).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA