Erased

How to spell erased

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce erased

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does erased mean?

1. verbPast tense of erase: rubbed out, deleted, or removed something completely so no trace remains.
2. adjectiveHaving been rubbed out, deleted, or removed so that nothing remains.

Erased in a sentence

• verb

  She erased the wrong answer and wrote the correct one.

• adjective

  The erased files could not be recovered without special software.

• verb

  The technician accidentally erased the entire hard drive.

• adjective

  Only a few erased lines hinted at what the page once contained.

Where does erased come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb eradere, which combined the prefix ex-, meaning 'out' or 'away', with radere, meaning 'to scrape' or 'to shave'. The literal sense was therefore to scrape something away, exactly what you do when you rub out pencil marks. Its past participle erasus passed into English in the seventeenth century, giving the verb 'erase', and the modern past tense simply adds the regular -ed ending. The same radere root survives in 'abrasive' (something that scrapes) and 'razor' (a tool that shaves), which is a useful reminder that the middle of erased is a single s, not the doubled or z spelling some writers expect.

How the word is built

• e- (variant of ex-, meaning out or away)
• -rase (from Latin radere, to scrape)
• -ed (past tense suffix)