Latin for "Carthage must be destroyed", the concluding comment of every single speech in the Senate by Cato the Elder, who wanted to provoke a Punic War which would result in the destruction of Carthage. He was ultimately successful. See non sequitur, anaphora, Aeneid, Dido and Aeneas, genocide, What I tell you three times is true, obsession.

Delendo est Carthago is an example of the passive periphrastic construction in Latin, usually expressing the idea of must, or ought. This grammatical construction is composed of the gerund + forms of the verb esse.