Other forms: vanquished, vanquishing, vanquishes
To vanquish is to defeat an enemy completely. Vanquish the invaders, vanquished at last, the vanquished army.
It is literary and heroic, and in modern prose it is used either about history or with a smile — vanquish the washing-up. The vanquished, as a plural noun, means the defeated side. Note that vanquish implies total defeat, unlike beat, and that it belongs to the same family as invincible, meaning unconquerable, and convince, which is winning an argument rather than a battle.
1verbvanquishTo defeat an enemy completely.
“The army was vanquished in about a fortnight.”
vanquish is a complete defeating.
Latin vincere means to conquer. It gives victory, convince, invincible and evict, so persuading somebody and evicting them are the same verb — one wins the argument and the other wins the house.
Proto-Indo-European
*weyk-
Latin
vincō
Old French
veincre
Middle English
venquysshen
English, today
vanquish
From Middle English venquysshen, vaynquisshen, borrowed from a conjugated form of Old French veincre, from Latin vincō.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA