demolishing

Estimated CEFR level: C2 — Proficiency

Estimated from word frequency; not an official CEFR classification.

Definition

You may very well remember of the courtesy which by them was used towards the Bretons in the battle of St. Aubin of Cormier and at the demolishing of Partenay. — Gargantua and Pantagruel, François Rabelais
An archbishop’s palace has just been demolished, an edifice in poor taste, no great harm is done; but in a block with the archiepiscopal palace a bishop’s palace has been demolished, a rare fragment of the fourteenth century, which the demolishing architect could not distinguish from the rest. — Notre-Dame de Paris, Victor Hugo
But when he resolved Cause into a statement of existing conditions that can never be completely known until we have mastered the whole series of physical phenomena, and showed that all human induction is fallible because necessarily imperfect, it became clear that Mill had very little to offer in substitution for those grounds of ordinary belief that he was bent on demolishing. — Studies in Literature and History, Alfred C., Sir Lyall

razing, leveling, tearing down

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