denude

American  

[dih-nood, -nyood] / dɪˈnud, -ˈnyud /

verb (used with object)

denuded, denuding

1. to make naked or bare; strip.

   The storm completely denuded the trees.

2. Geology. to subject to denudation.

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denude British  

/ ˌdiː-, dɪˈnjuːd, ˌdɛnjʊˈdeɪʃən /

verb

1. to divest of covering; make bare; uncover; strip

2. to expose (rock) by the erosion of the layers above

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Other Word Forms

• denudation noun
• denuded adjective
• denuder noun

Etymology

Origin of denude

First recorded in 1505–15; from Latin dēnūdāre, equivalent to dē- de- + nūdāre “to lay bare”; nude

Example Sentences

It looked desolate and black — destroyed businesses, block after block of homes burned to the ground, the mountains behind denuded and black as coal.

From Los Angeles Times

An ideological move away from globalization by some countries and the encouragement of reshoring that denudes comparative advantage benefits may also lift prices.

From MarketWatch

So, in 1934, as Depression-era dust storms darkened the skies over the Great Plains, worsened by overgrazing that denuded grasslands, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Taylor Grazing Act, named for the lawmaker.

From Salon

The foreground is a scar of denuded earth, storage tanks and bobbing pumpjacks — the legacy of oil discovered a century ago when only farmhouses were scattered over the surrounding flatlands.

From Los Angeles Times

The Victorians worried about a “world denuded of larger significance,” but we suffer from both material surfeit and spiritual abundance, and are captive to a surplus of competing and increasingly angry gods.

From The Wall Street Journal