Purges

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The process of getting rid of irrelevant or excess items is known as a clearing operation
2. Eliminates unwanted components or people from an organization or group
3. Cleans out unnecessary or harmful elements systematically from a system or collection

Etymology: Purges is simply the third-person singular form of the verb "purge," so the history belongs to the verb itself. Its roots reach back to Latin "pūrgāre," built from "pūrus," meaning clean or pure, and "agere," to do or make. Those two parts together give the basic sense of making something clean. The verb came into English in Middle English as "purgen," borrowed through Old French "purgier" from that Latin base. For centuries its meaning was physical and medical, describing the cleansing of the body, such as the emptying of the bowels or the taking of a purgative. The sense of removing unwanted people or elements from a group developed later, and the modern use that most readers recognise, cleaning out unwanted members or harmful parts from a system, grew out of that cleansing idea. A newer sense has a clear modern source: its slang use, meaning a deliberate killing or removal of people, derives from the 2013 film "The Purge."

Synonyms: cleanses, removes, eliminates, expels, disposes

Antonyms: retains, keeps, holds, accumulates, stores