incinerate

incinerated; incinerating; incinerates

See incinerate and think: "burn, baby, burn!" Whether it’s an old love letter that makes you sad or a terrible picture of yourself, it might be better just to incinerate it, meaning, you burn it.

When you burn something beyond recognition, you incinerate it, as its Latin origins in incinerare, or "into ashes" shows. Once you incinerate something, that’s pretty much all that’s left: ashes. The word has a formal feel and is often used to refer to the removal of waste material — your city might incinerate garbage, for example — but you can use it any time you need to reduce something to ashes.