eliminated

Eliminated is the past tense of the verb eliminate and, when used as an adjective, describes something that has been removed, excluded, or no longer considered. The word conveys a transfer from possibility or inclusion to removal or disqualification.

Origin and sense: eliminate comes from Latin eliminare, likely formed from ex- “out” plus limen “threshold,” with influence from Old French éliminer. In general English use, eliminated denotes a completed action of removing or ruling out, or a state in which something has been removed or excluded.

Usage across contexts:

- In everyday language, someone or something can be eliminated from consideration or from a competition, as in “The candidate was eliminated from the race” or “The team was eliminated in the semifinals.”

- In sports, elimination often refers to the process or round in which participants are removed from contention; single-elimination formats remove a contestant after a loss.

- In mathematics and computer science, elimination refers to methods that remove variables or possibilities, such as Gaussian elimination used to solve systems of linear equations or logical elimination in search algorithms.

- In statistics and data analysis, observations or variables may be eliminated from a dataset due to criteria like missing values, outliers, or irrelevance.

- In science and medicine, elimination can describe the removal of substances from a system or body, for example a drug being eliminated through metabolism and excretion.

See also: elimination, Gaussian elimination, elimination game, exclusion.