Erase

How to spell erase

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce erase

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does erase mean?

1. verbTo remove or rub out something written, recorded, or stored, or to wipe out a trace of it.

Erase in a sentence

• A soft rubber can erase pencil marks without tearing the page.

• The technician had to erase the old data before reinstalling the software.

Where does erase come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb eradere, meaning 'to scrape out' or 'rub away', which was formed from the prefix e- (a reduced form of ex-, meaning 'out') and the verb radere, meaning 'to scrape' or 'to shave'. English took it up in the seventeenth century, originally with the very physical sense of scratching writing off parchment or a wax tablet with a sharp tool. The same radere root sits behind several relatives in English: 'raze', which means to scrape a building flat to the ground, 'abrade', meaning to wear away by rubbing, and even 'rascal', once a word for the scrapings or rabble. The modern figurative sense, wiping out a memory, a recording, or a debt, grew naturally from that idea of rubbing something off a surface. Because the single 's' is pronounced like a 'z' in many accents, the spelling can feel slightly counterintuitive, but the lone 's' is the only consonant to remember.

How the word is built

• e- (variant of ex-: out)
• rase (from Latin radere: to scrape)