How did liquidate come to mean murder? [closed]
Solution 1:
The term "liquidate" dates back to the 16th century but its more common contemporary connotations are more recent. As suggested by etymonline, the sense “to kill” probably derives from a Russian usage of the same Latin root.
1570s, of accounts, "to reduce to order, to set out clearly" (a sense now obsolete), from Late Latin or Medieval Latin liquidatus, past participle of liquidare "to melt, make liquid, make clear, clarify," from Latin liquidus "fluid, liquid, moist" (see liquid (adj.)). Sense of "clear away" (a debt) first recorded 1755. *The meaning "wipe out, kill" is from 1924, possibly from Russian likvidirovat, ultimately from the Latin word.*
Wiktionary also states -
From Medieval Latin liquidatus (“liquid, clear”), past participle of liquidare. The sense “to kill, do away with” is a semantic loan from Russian ликвиди́ровать (likvidírovatʹ), ultimately from Latin liquidus.
The use of liquidate and liquidation as a euphemism for killing or disposing of “inconvenient groups of persons” dates from about 1924 or 1925, according to the etymonline entries referenced at the beginning of this sentence. Those links seem to suggest that liquidate in this particular sense may have followed from Russian likvidirovat.
Per the OED, it comes from the Russian ликвиди́ровать (likvidírovatʹ) -
7. after Russ. likvidírovat′ to liquidate, wind up. To put an end to, abolish; to stamp out, wipe out; to kill.
- 1924 Yale Rev. XIII. 477 ― In this way the ‘Labor Opposition’, the ‘Workers Pravda’, and a few other recalcitrant groups were all ‘liquidated’.
- 1926 C. Sheridan Turkish Kaleidoscope xvi. 125 ― The evening paper, L’Akcham, came out with large headlines: ‘How to Liquidate a Strike’.
- 1930 Economist 1 Nov. (Russ. Suppl.) 2/2 ― Only in 1929, when the growth of the Socialist section of agriculture was enabling the State to become independent of the supplies of the Kulaks, could the Government begin to ‘liquidate’ them.
- 1939 V. A. Demant Relig. Prospect iv. 90 ― The Trotskyists··are ‘liquidated’ as being insufficiently dialectical to see that the policy of the Russian State at any moment has absolute finality.
- 1943 C. S. Lewis Abolition of Man iii. 37 ― Once we killed bad men: now we liquidate unsocial elements.
- 1957 Partridge English gone Wrong ii. 31 ― Liquidate, therefore, is an erudite synonym of ‘to wind up’, hence, in its euphemistic transferred sense, it means ‘to eradicate in a thoroughly ruthless manner’, ‘to destroy, especially by mass murder’.
- 1970 Nature 26 Dec. 1248/2 ― All existing sources of industrial pollution are to be ‘liquidated’.
- 1971 Sunday Times 13 June 12/6 ― When the army units fanned out in Dacca on the evening of March 25··many of them carried lists of people to be liquidated.