[di-leet] Pronunciation Key | to strike out or remove (something written or printed); cancel; erase; expunge. |
] —Related forms
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
| de·lete
(dĭ-lēt') Pronunciation Key
tr.v. de·let·ed, de·let·ing, de·letes To remove by striking out or canceling: deleted some unnecessary words in the first draft. See Synonyms at erase. [Latin dēlēre, dēlēt-, to wipe out.] |
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
delete
| delete | |
verb | |
| 1. | remove or make invisible; "Please delete my name from your list" |
| 2. | wipe out digitally or magnetically recorded information; "Who erased the files form my hard disk?" [syn: erase] [ant: record] |
| 3. | cut or eliminate; "she edited the juiciest scenes" [syn: edit] |
delete
1.
Usually this operation only deletes information from the tables the file system uses to locate named files; the file's contents still exist on disk and can sometimes be recovered by scanning the whole disk for strings which are known to have been in the file. Files created subsequently on the same disk are quite likely to reuse the same blocks and thus overwrite the deleted file's data permanently.
2.
The choice of code 127 (binary 1111111) is not arbitrary but dates back to the use of paper tape for input. The delete key rewound the tape by one character and punched out all seven holes, thus obliterating whatever character was there before. The tape reading software ignored any delete characters in the input.
(1996-12-01)
Delete
De*lete"\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Deleted; p. pr. & vb. n. Deleting.] [L. deletus, p. p. of delere to destroy. Cf. 1st Dele.] To blot out; to erase; to expunge; to dele; to omit. I have, therefore, . . . inserted eleven stanzas which do not appear in Sir Walter Scott's version, and have deleted eight. --Aytoun.
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