Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The act or an instance of exhausting.
  • noun The state of being exhausted; extreme fatigue.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act of exhausting, or of drawing out or draining off; the act of emptying completely of the contents.
  • noun The state of being exhausted or emptied, or of being deprived of strength or energy.
  • noun Specifically In geometry, a method formerly used for demonstrating the properties of curvilinear areas.
  • noun In logic, a method of proof in which all the arguments tending to an opposite conclusion are brought forward, discussed, and proved untenable or absurd, thus leaving the original proposition established by the exclusion of every alternative.
  • noun In physics, the act of removing the air from a receiver, as by an air-pump, or the extent to which the process has been carried.
  • noun In chem., the process of completely extracting from a substance whatever is removable by a given solvent, or the state of being thus completely deprived of certain soluble matters.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act of draining out or draining off; the act of emptying completely of the contents.
  • noun The state of being exhausted or emptied; the state of being deprived of strength or spirits.
  • noun (Math.) An ancient geometrical method in which an exhaustive process was employed. It was nearly equivalent to the modern method of limits.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The point of complete depletion, of the state of being used up.
  • noun Supreme tiredness; having exhausted energy.
  • noun dated, chemistry The removal (by percolation etc) of an active medicinal constituent from plant material
  • noun dated, physics The removal of all air from a vessel (the creation of a vacuum)

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun extreme fatigue
  • noun the act of exhausting something entirely
  • noun serious weakening and loss of energy

Etymologies

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Examples

  • It is not only in _general_ nervous exhaustion, however, that electric baths exercise this salutary influence, but in the condition known as _cerebral exhaustion_ likewise.

    The Electric Bath George M. Schweig

  • I now must collapse in exhaustion from a very painful and quick labor once the epidural wore off (I let it go off after she successfully flipped).

    A Good Birth | Her Bad Mother 2010

  • - Joanne is doing a bloody brilliant job, in fact but there's going to come a point when even a publicist like Joanne, loyal as she is, is going to start asking exactly what the term exhaustion means.

    A Traitor to Memory George, Elizabeth 2001

  • Without going at length into so wide a topic as the exercise of faculties and its reactive effects, it will be sufficient here to call to mind that every faculty (when in a state of normal activity) is most capable at the outset; and that the change in its condition, which ends in what we term exhaustion, begins simultaneously with its exercise.

    The Philosophy of Style Herbert Spencer 1861

  • This defense is known as "exhaustion"-the third parties in question should be covered by the original license, so patent owners can't claim infringement by those third parties. filed suit against seven small independent developers.

    Ars Technica Chris Foresman 2011

  • He clumsily lifts the dead person back onto the pile of freshly killed human corpses, slumping over it in exhaustion, his lab coat cloaking the heap, but not entirely covering it.

    Michael Vazquez: ON THE 48TH ANNUAL NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL Michael Vazquez 2010

  • He clumsily lifts the dead person back onto the pile of freshly killed human corpses, slumping over it in exhaustion, his lab coat cloaking the heap, but not entirely covering it.

    Michael Vazquez: ON THE 48TH ANNUAL NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL Michael Vazquez 2010

  • He clumsily lifts the dead person back onto the pile of freshly killed human corpses, slumping over it in exhaustion, his lab coat cloaking the heap, but not entirely covering it.

    Michael Vazquez: ON THE 48TH ANNUAL NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL Michael Vazquez 2010

  • The exhaustion is so debilitating that from 1965 to 2006, TIME magazine reported in 2006, "the number of Catholic nuns in the U.S. has declined from 179,954 to just 67,773" (that's the "spirit"!).

    Jesuit: Obama is "the most effective spokesperson" for "the spirit of Vatican II" 2009

  • And they run around the place, jabbering like loons for hours until they collapse in exhaustion

    Think Progress » Palin blames ‘Gore-gate’ for ‘this snake oil science stuff.’ 2010

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