To destroy or greatly damage one's position in a game, in one's work or career, in one's financial or social position, etc.
Used in a Sentence
self-destruct
Definitions, parts of speech, synonyms, and sentence examples for self-destruct.
Editorial note
To elaborate on the future stage, Carl Sagan suggested that technological civilizations tend to self-destruct (e.g.
Examples15
Definitions2
Parts of speech1
Quick take
To destroy or greatly damage one's position in a game, in one's work or career, in one's financial or social position, etc.
Meaning at a glance
The clearest senses and uses of self-destruct gathered in one view.
(usually figuratively) To destroy oneself or itself.
Definitions
Core meanings and parts of speech for self-destruct.
verb
To destroy or greatly damage one's position in a game, in one's work or career, in one's financial or social position, etc.
verb
(usually figuratively) To destroy oneself or itself.
Example sentences
To elaborate on the future stage, Carl Sagan suggested that technological civilizations tend to self-destruct (e.g.
Are these people fair game for however much profit can be extracted as they self-destruct?
Or a self-destruct to blow the whole thing up before it hits the ground.
The shuttle may or may not have had a self-destruct system in the orbiter itself; I'm finding conflicting references.
After I convinced her that there's no self-destruct button on PCs, she doesn't think like that.
I'll also not be surprised if it makes my computer self-destruct via spontaneous self-combustion after reading.
Startups should beware of such behavior - it is a great way to cause the company to self-destruct when you are not giving all stakeholders adequate say on deliverables.
These things turn at a crazy number of RPM, so even a small amount of weight off-balance could cause them to vibrate and self-destruct catastrophically if it hit the right harmonic.
>After I convinced her that there's no self-destruct button on PCs I attempted that.
Just because we've entered the domains math and CS, we get months of dithering, contemplating whether or not to force domestic companies to install complex new self-destruct functions into their products.
It's not a normal use-case and in fact it may be to the benefit of the user to use an SSD in that case in the hope that the data will self-destruct with complete plausible deniability.
There's no need to give an otherwise good candidate the chance to self-destruct over trivial details like that by obsessively Googling everything to make sure it's exactly correct when that's not what I care about, and in so doing they aren't paying as much attention to overall algorithmic details, which I do care about.
Quote examples
From what I can tell, this "C++" looks like it could self-destruct at any minute, unless handled by an expert.
A microwave with the "feature" that "it has a 10% chance to self-destruct each time it finishes heating something" would cost less, since no matter how hard you try to spin that as a feature, a reasonable person would see it as a defect.
>> The former security director "was 'obsessed' with root kits, a type of computer program that can be installed quickly, set to do just about anything, and then self-destruct without a trace," Probably just about the worst description of what a root kit is...
Frequently asked questions
Short answers drawn from the clearest meanings and examples for this word.
How do you use self-destruct in a sentence?
To elaborate on the future stage, Carl Sagan suggested that technological civilizations tend to self-destruct (e.g.
What does self-destruct mean?
To destroy or greatly damage one's position in a game, in one's work or career, in one's financial or social position, etc.
What part of speech is self-destruct?
self-destruct is commonly used as verb.