erase
to rub or scrape out, as letters or characters written, engraved, etc.; efface.
to eliminate completely: She couldn't erase the tragic scene from her memory.
to obliterate (material recorded on magnetic tape or a magnetic disk): She erased the message.
to obliterate recorded material from (a magnetic tape or disk): He accidentally erased the tape.
Computers. to remove (data) from computer storage.
to exclude, replace, or refuse to recognize (the identity, experience, or contribution of a minority group or group member):Framing rape as a woman’s issue erases men’s accounts of sexual violence from public discourse.: See also whitewash (def. 7b).
Slang. to murder: The gang had to erase him before he informed on them.
to give way to effacement readily or easily.
to obliterate characters, letters, markings, etc., from something.
Origin of erase
1synonym study For erase
Other words for erase
Opposites for erase
Other words from erase
- e·ras·a·bil·i·ty, noun
- e·ras·a·ble, adjective
- half-e·rased, adjective
- non·e·ras·a·ble, adjective
- un·e·ras·a·ble, adjective
- un·e·rased, adjective
- un·e·ras·ing, adjective
Words that may be confused with erase
- erasable , irascible
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use erase in a sentence
Lady A is in a fight for her life … they don’t realize they’re trying to erase her identity.
It will still have all your old data on it, though, so once you have that extracted to the new drive inside your computer, you’ll want to format and erase the old drive.
Rip out your computer’s brain and turn it into an external hard drive | Whitson Gordon | November 10, 2020 | Popular-ScienceI mean, 20 million people could lose their coverage if this law gets erased.
A blueprint for whoever wins the presidential election to fix America’s health care mess | jakemeth | November 4, 2020 | FortuneInterest rates are so low that they’ve largely erased the key benefit — income — Treasury bonds are theoretically supposed to provide over stocks.
The Fed Saved the Economy but Is Threatening Trillions of Dollars Worth of Middle-Class Retirement | by Allan Sloan | October 21, 2020 | ProPublicaIf the system was pointing towards the Earth, its future explosion could erase our planet’s ozone layer, exposing all living creatures to the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation.
This pair of dancing stars will one day collide and explode | María Paula Rubiano A. | October 16, 2020 | Popular-Science
British Dictionary definitions for erase
/ (ɪˈreɪz) /
to obliterate or rub out (something written, typed, etc)
(tr) to destroy all traces of; remove completely: time erases grief
to remove (a recording) from (magnetic tape)
(tr) computing to replace (data) on a storage device with characters representing an absence of data
Origin of erase
1Derived forms of erase
- erasable, adjective
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
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