liquidate

Etymology

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.

verb

1. (transitive) To settle (a debt) by paying the outstanding amount.
   Friburg was ceded to Zurich by Sigismund to liquidate a debt of a thousand florins. 1779, William Coxe, Sketches of the Natural, Political and Civil State of Switzerland
2. (transitive) To settle the affairs of (a company), by using its assets to pay its debts.
3. (transitive) To convert (assets) into cash; to redeem.
   Her only relative was a niece in Boston, who arranged for a local lawyer to liquidate Mrs. Garner’s property. 2016, Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad, Fleet (2017), page 59
4. (law, transitive) To determine by agreement or by litigation the precise amount of (indebtedness); to make the amount of (a debt) clear and certain.
   A debt or demand is liquidated whenever the amount due is agreed on by the parties, or fixed by the operation of law. 1851, Hargroves v. Cooke, 15th Georgia Reports 321
   If our epistolary accounts were fairly liquidated, I believe you would be brought in considerably debtor. February 27, 1759, Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, letter to his son (letter CXXVIII)
5. (transitive) To do away with.
   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. 1939 September, D. S. Barrie, “The Railways of South Wales”, in Railway Magazine, page 161
6. (transitive) to kill, destroy, eliminate (mostly for political or ideological reasons)
7. (obsolete, transitive) To make clear and intelligible.
   Time only can liquidate the meaning of all parts of a compound system. 1788, Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist, number LXXXII
8. (obsolete, transitive) To make liquid.