Abrasive

How to spell abrasive

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce abrasive

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does abrasive mean?

1. adjectiveTending to scrape or wear down a surface, or, of a person or manner, harsh and unpleasant in a way that irritates others.
2. nounA substance used for grinding, polishing, or cleaning by scraping away material.

Abrasive in a sentence

• adjective

  The cleaning paste was too abrasive for the polished worktop.

• noun

  The workshop kept a mild abrasive on hand for buffing scratched metal.

• adjective

  His abrasive tone in meetings made colleagues reluctant to share ideas.

• noun

  Jewellers choose a fine abrasive to bring up a high shine without gouging.

Where does abrasive come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb radere, which literally meant 'to scrape, scratch, or shave away', combined with the prefix ab- meaning 'away from'. The Latin past participle stem rasus gave a family of scraping words, and abradere meant to scrape something off. English assembled abrasive in the early nineteenth century, originally as a technical term for materials used to grind, smooth, or wear down a surface. The figurative sense, describing a person whose blunt manner grates on others, grew naturally from the literal image of one surface scraping another. The same radere root sits inside relatives such as 'razor', 'erase', and 'rascal', and remembering that buried Latin 'ras' helps explain the single s in the middle of the word.

How the word is built

• ab- (away)
• ras (from Latin radere, to scrape)
• -ive (adjective/noun suffix)