liquidate

1. (transitive)Examples: "The Para rubber is of very fine quality, […] whilst the Ceara, a very inferior quality, often passes through a species of decomposition before arriving in this country, the heat of the ship's hold being sufficient to partially liquidate its substance."Synonyms: liquefyarchaicraretransitive

2. (transitive)figurativelytransitive

3. (transitive)Examples: "A Drunkard is a Creature God ne're made, / The Species Man, the Nature retrograde, / […] / Thoſe damn themſelves to heap an ill-got Store, / Theſe liquidate their VVealth, and covet to be poor."figurativelytransitive

4. (transitive)Examples: "State farms in Southern Russia, in the Caucasus and in Siberia, have proved a failure, and a change in policy has been in progress. […] Now the State farms are being liquidated. Several hundred have been broken up and 4,000,000 acres of land distributed among the collective farms. A Riga correspondent says that the collective farmers must pay for the stock, implements, machinery and buildings for which the State allows a few years' credit, "but apparently the land itself is received gratis with the laborers hitherto employed on it, who become additional shareholders of the collective farms to which they are allotted.""; "The process which, if not checked, will abolish Man, goes on apace among Communists and Democrats no less than among Fascists. […] Once we killed bad men: now we liquidate unsocial elements."; "It seems that this woman had kept a detailed journal of her deep devotion to her woman friend. The problem she posed to Ann [Landers; pseudonym of Eppie Lederer] was: "Should I destroy the journal?" Ann's answer to this question was: "Put a match to it.["] […] Ann assumes that homosexual thoughts and experiences are evil and, if possible, they should be liquidated from consciousness. It is appalling that Ann is allowed to give out such advice!"Synonyms: annihilate, bag, baptize, bereave of life, blight, bring down, bump off, buryAntonyms: destroyfigurativelyinformaltransitive

5. (transitive)Examples: "How far progress has been made in liquidating the locomotive stock of the old companies may be judged from the shrinkage in their numbers, by some 50 per cent. at the end of 1931, to about 35 per cent. in 1938."; "Her only relative was a niece in Boston, who arranged for a local lawyer to liquidate Mrs. Garner’s property."figurativelytransitive

6. (transitive)Examples: "The excess of the former amount over the latter constitutes of course a debt due by this Company to the banking company, the settlement of which has engaged the earnest attention of the Board. Their wish was to liquidate that amount by the proceeds of sales of property; but the unfavourable state of the colony has prevented their doing more than effecting a reduction of the debt by a payment to account."; "Defence could not be merely passive: assistance must be given to Mülhausen to liquidate outstanding debts, while Sigismund [Archduke of Austria] was open to receive offers, within the limits of the treaty of St. Omer, to redeem some or all of the territories he had pledged."figurativelytransitive