Incinerate
verbBase incinerate · Past incinerated · Past Participle incinerated · Present Participle incinerating · 3rd person incinerates
Definition
1. (verb) To burn something completely until nothing is left — to destroy by fire, reducing it to ashes.
Context Alive
You're watching a documentary about waste management and they show a massive industrial furnace that incinerates hundreds of tonnes of rubbish every day. The footage shows trucks tipping waste into a pit, then a crane dropping it into flames so hot that everything — plastic, wood, paper — turns to ash in seconds.
Meanings
1 meanings 1 To Burn Something Completely to Ashes (Verb) Common ▼
This meaning is about destroying something by burning it at high temperatures until nothing solid remains — just ash or nothing at all. Imagine a wildfire tearing through a forest so intensely that entire trees are reduced to grey powder — the fire didn't just burn them, it incinerated them. This is describing total destruction by fire, not just partial burning. You might read "the documents were incinerated to prevent them from being discovered" about someone deliberately destroying evidence, or someone could say "the spacecraft incinerated on re-entry" to describe how the heat of entering Earth's atmosphere burned it up completely. Or think about an industrial waste plant where medical waste is incinerated at extremely high temperatures to make sure nothing hazardous survives. The word implies complete destruction — there's nothing left to recover.
✏️ Incinerate is stronger and more total than "burn." You can burn toast and still eat it — but if you incinerate something, it's gone. The noun incinerator is the machine or facility used to burn waste: "a waste incinerator", "a hospital incinerator." Incineration is the process itself: "waste disposal by incineration." The word comes from Latin "cinis" meaning ashes.
Common Patterns
Basic Structures
incinerate + noun (waste / documents / evidence) → to destroy something completely by burning it
The company illegally incinerated toxic waste behind the factory.
be incinerated → passive — something was destroyed by fire
The building and everything inside it was incinerated in the explosion.
incinerated on / during + event → destroyed by extreme heat during a specific event
The satellite was incinerated on re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.
Common Structures
completely / totally incinerated → emphasises that nothing survived the fire
The car was completely incinerated — investigators couldn't recover anything from it.
incinerate at + temperature → used in technical contexts to specify the heat required
Medical waste must be incinerated at temperatures above 850°C.
incinerator / incineration → the machine or process used to burn waste completely
The city built a new incinerator to handle the growing amount of household waste.
Collocations
10 collocationsincinerate waste
to burn rubbish or unwanted material completely
incinerate documents
to destroy papers by fire, often to prevent them being read
incinerate evidence
to burn proof of something to cover up wrongdoing
completely incinerated
burned so thoroughly that nothing recognisable remains
waste incinerator
a facility or machine designed to burn rubbish at high temperatures
incineration plant
an industrial site where waste is burned as a disposal method
incinerated on re-entry
burned up by friction and heat when entering Earth's atmosphere
incinerate at high temperatures
to burn at extreme heat to ensure complete destruction
medical waste incineration
the burning of hospital waste to prevent contamination
reduced to ash / incinerated
burned until only ash or nothing remains
Example Sentences
10 examples
1
The factory was incinerated in a fire that burned for over twelve hours.
The factory was completely destroyed by a fire that lasted more than half a day.
2
They incinerated the classified documents to make sure no one could ever read them.
They burned the secret papers to ashes so nobody would ever be able to access them.
3
The spacecraft will incinerate on re-entry — it was never designed to survive the return journey.
The craft will burn up completely when it hits the atmosphere — it wasn't built to come back.
4
Medical waste is incinerated at extremely high temperatures to prevent any risk of contamination.
Hospital waste is burned in intense heat to make sure no infectious material survives.
5
The wildfire moved so fast that entire houses were incinerated before firefighters could respond.
The fire spread so quickly that whole homes were reduced to ash before crews could even arrive.
6
The city council approved the construction of a new waste incinerator on the outskirts of town.
Local officials gave the go-ahead to build a new facility for burning rubbish on the edge of the city.
7
The car was completely incinerated in the crash — nothing could be salvaged.
The vehicle was burned so badly in the accident that absolutely nothing was left to recover.
8
Some countries rely heavily on incineration as a method of waste disposal.
Certain nations burn a large proportion of their rubbish as their main way of getting rid of it.
9
The letter was incinerated the moment she finished reading it.
She burned the letter to ashes the second she was done with it.
10
The explosion was so powerful it incinerated everything within a 500-metre radius.
The blast was strong enough to burn and destroy everything within half a kilometre.
Synonyms & Antonyms
6 items
Synonymsburn
much broader — burn doesn't imply total destruction the way incinerate does
cremate
specifically for burning a dead body — a narrower, respectful version of the same process
reduce to ashes
a descriptive phrase that captures the same idea of total destruction by fire
Antonymspreserve
to keep something safe and intact — the opposite of destroying it
extinguish
to put out a fire — stopping the process that incinerate describes
salvage
to rescue something from destruction — saving what incineration would eliminate