noun
adjective
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causing abrasion; grating; rough
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irritating in manner or personality; causing tension or annoyance
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of abrasive
Explanation
What does an obnoxious person have in common with sandpaper? Both are abrasive. Anything that grates or irritates — physically or metaphorically — can be described using this adjective. The history of the word abrasive illustrates how a word typically enters the English language and then changes with time. The English verb abrade, "to wear down by scraping," entered the language from Latin abradere, "to scrape off," in the late 1600s. Some 200 years later, the adjective form of the word — abrasive — came into use to describe a type of grinding tool. By the 1920s, abrasive had acquired the more figurative sense of annoying and infuriating. If you find someone abrasive, he or she grinds away at your nerves.
Vocabulary lists containing abrasive
100 SAT Words Beginning with "A"
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Hamilton
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All The Feels: Touching Words For Textures
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Abrasive and tuneful, fast and slow, noisy and danceable.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 15, 2019
Abrasive noise often swallows the band, with hollow-eyed voices briefly emerging.
From New York Times • Sep. 12, 2018
Abrasive language aside, Who are you, and what gives you the right? are actually legitimate questions considering the highly unorthodox circumstances:
From Salon • Jul. 15, 2018
Ratatat is a Brooklyn band, but "Abrasive" feels like some lost B-side from Daft Punk's Alive 2007 or a track on a rare Justice EP.
From The Verge • Jul. 24, 2015
The Abrasive Pencil.—A rod of carborundum composition may be ground or filed to a point, and this forms a very useful pencil for general work.
From A Handbook of Laboratory Glass-Blowing by Bolas, Bernard D.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
