do away with

present singular third person does away with · participle present doing away with · past did away with · participle past done away with

1. idiomaticinformaltransitiveTo abolish; to put an end to; to eliminate.

   She’s working hard to do away with negative thinking.

   5 more examples

   She tried to do away with the argument by changing the topic.

   The criminals tried to do away with the evidence before the police arrived.

   For no nearness in space, no closeness of relations, no daily intimacy, can do away with the inexorable laws which give the adept his seclusion.

   1887, Mabel Collins, The Illuminated Way: A Guide to Newophytes, 1903 ed., Yogi publications, New Jersey, p. 35

   Using electricity as motive power for railroads will do away with fuel trains, tenders, coal handling, water, and all that.

   1922, Victor Appleton, chapter 7, in Tom Swift And His Electric Locomotive

   Centralised traffic control does away with intermediate operators over long stretches of line.

   1950 May, Cecil J. Allen, “British Locomotive Practice and Performance”, in Railway Magazine, page 300

   Synonyms: expunge

2. euphemisticidiomaticinformaltransitiveTo have someone killed.

   He plotted to do away with his rival.

   1 more example

   […]unless we can begin to understand that the vast majority of those who do away with themselves—and of those who attempt to do so—do not do it because of any frailty, and rarely out of impulse, but because they are in the grip of an illness that causes almost unimaginable pain.

   1988 December 19, William Styron, “Why Primo Levi Need Not Have Died”, in The New York Times, →ISSN