oblivion

A state of being completely forgotten or destroyed, so that nothing remains.

• The once famous actor faded into oblivion.
• Bombs reduced the village to oblivion.
• Without written records, their stories might slip into oblivion.

How to use it: fade into oblivion (His early novels faded into oblivion.); consign someone/something to oblivion (The new technology consigned the old machines to oblivion.)

Similar words: obscurity, extinction

Common phrases: fade into oblivion, consign to oblivion, bomb into oblivion

A state in which you are completely unaware of what is happening or remember nothing.

• Sleep brought a few hours of oblivion.
• He drank himself into oblivion after the argument.
• She welcomed the peaceful oblivion of deep sleep.

How to use it: into oblivion (Exhausted, she sank into oblivion.)

Similar words: unconsciousness, unawareness

Opposites: awareness

Common phrases: drink into oblivion, sink into oblivion, peaceful oblivion

A state after death in which souls wait or are made ready for heaven.

• The tale places lost souls in oblivion.
• They believed oblivion was a stage before heaven.
• The poem describes spirits waiting in oblivion after death.

Similar words: purgatory

Common phrases: souls in oblivion, realm of oblivion

To erase or destroy something completely, leaving nothing to remember it by.

• Time will oblivion these names.
• The ruler tried to oblivion every record of the rebellion.
• The poet imagined a sea that oblivioned all human traces.

Similar words: erase, obliterate, efface

Opposites: preserve

Common phrases: oblivion the past, oblivion something