reduce to ashes

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Nothing less would reduce to ashes the 2,400 elephant tusks -- twelve tons of nonflammable ivory in all -- that Kenyan wildlife officials had confiscated from poachers in the past four years.

From Time Magazine Archive

To incinerate is to reduce to ashes; the sense differs little from that of cremate, but it is in less popular use.

From English Synonyms and Antonyms With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions by Fernald, James Champlin

Among other things he said: "No fire ever yet was lighted that could reduce to ashes an eternal truth."

From Charles Carleton Coffin War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman by Griffis, William Elliot

Erect a furnace in some convenient locality, to serve the same purpose as that known as the “Queen’s tobacco-pipe” at the London Docks does or did—i.e., to reduce to ashes all infected or condemned articles.

From The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, October 1879 by Various

These acts of Faith, supernatural as they are, soon reduce to ashes all the engines and machinations of the enemy.

From The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales by Camus, Jean Pierre