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purge

UK/pɜːd͡ʒ/US/pɜɹd͡ʒ/
nounB2+Common in everyday speech and writing · #6,644 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: purges

A purge is a violent removal of unwanted people from a group. A party purge, the great purge, purge the ranks.

In politics it means removing members by force or fear rather than by any process, and Stalin's purges of the 1930s are the reference point. In medicine, to purge is to empty the bowels, which is the older and literal sense of the word.

Definitions of purge

  1. 1nounpurgeA violent removal of unwanted people from a group.B2+

    “The dictator's purge removed hundreds of officers he no longer trusted.”

purge is a removal.

Where it comes from

Latin purgare means to cleanse, from purus, pure, plus agere, to make. Pure and purify are relatives.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *pewH-

  2. Latin

    pūrgō — to make pure, to cleanse

  3. Old French

    purgier

  4. Middle English

    purgen

  5. English, today

    purge

Built from

  • pūrus · Latin — clean, pure
  • agō · Latin — to make, to do

From Middle English purgen, from Old French purgier, from Latin pūrgō (“to make pure, to cleanse”), from pūrus (“clean, pure”) + agō (“to make, to do”). The slang sense derived via the 2013 film The Purge.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

purge in the wild

  • In 1940, Beria began a new purge of the Red Army.

    Lavrentiy Beria

  • Finally, Hitler used the purge to attack or eliminate German critics of his new regime, especially those loyal to Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, and settle scores with enemies.

    Night of the Long Knives

  • At least 85 people died during the purge, although the final death toll might have been higher, with some estimates running from 700 to 1,000.

    Night of the Long Knives

  • The purges were largely conducted by the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs), which functioned as the interior ministry and secret police of the USSR.

    Great Purge

  • The purges were eventually expanded to the Red Army high command, which had a disastrous effect on the military, including Marshal of the Soviet Union Mikhail Tukhachevsky.

    Great Purge

1 / 2

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the pūrus family

purepour

purge — used about once every 2,055 pages · #6,644 · point at the bar for the others