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Ruiner

   Also found in: Legal, Idioms, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia, Hutchinson 0.01 sec.
ru·in  (rn)
n.
1. Total destruction or disintegration, either physical, moral, social, or economic.
2. A cause of total destruction.
3.
a. The act of destroying totally.
b. A destroyed person, object, or building.
4. The remains of something destroyed, disintegrated, or decayed. Often used in the plural: studied the ruins of ancient Greece.
v. ru·ined, ru·in·ing, ru·ins
v.tr.
1. To destroy completely; demolish.
2. To harm irreparably.
3. To reduce to poverty or bankruptcy.
4. To deprive of chastity.
v.intr.
To fall into ruin.

[Middle English ruine, from Old French, from Latin runa, from ruere, to rush, collapse.]

ruin·a·ble adj.
ruin·er n.
Synonyms: ruin, raze, demolish, destroy, wreck
These verbs mean to injure and deprive somethingor, less often, someoneof usefulness, soundness, or value. Ruin usually implies irretrievable harm but not necessarily total destruction: "You will ruin no more lives as you ruined mine" (Arthur Conan Doyle).
Raze, demolish, and destroy can all imply reduction to ruins or even complete obliteration: "raze what was left of the city from the surface of the earth" (John Lothrop Motley). The prosecutor demolished the opposition's argument. "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness" (Allen Ginsberg).
To wreck is to ruin in or as if in a violent collision: "The Boers had just wrecked a British military train" (Arnold Bennett).
When wreck is used in referring to the ruination of a person or his or her hopes or reputation, it implies irreparable shattering: "Coleridge, poet and philosopher wrecked in a mist of opium" (Matthew Arnold).
ThesaurusLegend:  Synonyms Related Words Antonyms
Noun1.Ruinerruiner - a person who destroys or ruins or lays waste to; "a destroyer of the environment"; "jealousy was his undoer"; "uprooters of gravestones"
annihilator - a total destroyer
bad person - a person who does harm to others
iconoclast, image breaker - a destroyer of images used in religious worship
diversionist, saboteur, wrecker - someone who commits sabotage or deliberately causes wrecks
vandal - someone who willfully destroys or defaces property


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? Mentioned in ? References in classic literature
 
There was a ruined uncle in the family group--ruined by his brother, the Father of the Marshalsea, and knowing no more how than his ruiner did, but accepting the fact as an inevitable certainty--on whom her protection devolved.
 
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