verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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elidesimple
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elidessimple
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have elidedperfect
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has elidedperfect
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am elidingprogressive
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are elidingprogressive
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is elidingprogressive
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have been elidingperfect progressive
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has been elidingperfect progressive
Past
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elidedsimple
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had elidedperfect
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was elidingprogressive
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were elidingprogressive
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had been elidingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of elide
First recorded in 1530–50; from Latin ēlīdere “to strike out,” equivalent to ē- “out, out of; away” + -līdere, combining form of laedere “to wound”; see e- 1
Explanation
To elide something is to omit it or get rid of it. If your parents are especially strict, you might tell them about the A you got on your English essay and elide the fact that you failed your math quiz. If your school is putting on a production of "Grease" and the director cuts a major scene from the play, you can say she elides it. And when an elected official gives a speech, he's almost sure to elide certain topics that are too controversial or negative. Elide is also used in grammar to describe the way people speak when they leave out certain sounds. It comes from the Latin elidere, "strike out or force out."
Vocabulary lists containing elide
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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.
See Examples For:
But this kind of ludicrous fantasy allows Hegseth to elide the deep paradox of his argument.
From Salon ● Nov. 14, 2024
She also came to realize everything monuments could distort and elide.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 14, 2024
The problems with the analogy were evident from the lengths Ely went to to elide them.
From Slate ● Jun. 25, 2023
They needed to preserve the essential meaning of each element of the show, but also elide some of the more arcane details, and they needed to echo the musicality of the language.
From New York Times ● Sep. 14, 2022
He was keen to elide the differences between ancient Rome and his own London, as well as those between Verona and Canterbury.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
But she elides the evidence that college-educated fathers spend far more time with their children than men did a generation ago.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 11, 2025
On an even darker note, a dad uses his Google Pixel’s A.I. feature to talk about the joys of raising children, and somehow the severe dystopian motifs of this premise completely elides the company.
From Slate ● Feb. 10, 2025
The play elides Court’s winning record over King.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 20, 2023
But it also elides an inconvenient truth about mainstream filmmaking that most screenwriters would prefer go un-emphasized, which is that their craft has always been a bastardized art form.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 17, 2023
To us, the sound of the horn elides from high frequencies to low.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
Such abundance makes the job of a critic difficult: For every artist and presentation that gets singled out there are several others that are elided due to space constraints.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 27, 2026
"When a wrongful conviction occurs, it is, in the end, because they said so. All too often, the responsibility of judges for producing and maintaining wrongful convictions gets neglected, elided, and ignored."
From BBC ● Dec. 20, 2024
The announcement elided answers to any number of questions.
From Slate ● Nov. 16, 2024
Moreover, his narratives elided colonization and devalued objects of great spiritual importance.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 29, 2023
At times a vowel is elided; or rather but faintly touched by the voice.
From The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) by De Benneville, James S. (James Seguin)
For a memoirist, Mr. Lemann remains ambivalent about self-revelation, eliding his professional accomplishments and any emotional upheavals along the way.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 26, 2026
Instead of fudging or eliding the vertical joins, he emphasized them, creating multi-paneled photographs where figures or parts of figures are visibly duplicated.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 25, 2023
Family members had lived through the Armenian genocide, and she grew up with an awareness that historically grand narratives have a way of eliding certain events.
From New York Times ● Feb. 23, 2023
"TikTok videos. We've got a lot of TikTok videos," Ingrahm responded, eliding any context.
From Salon ● Aug. 20, 2021
The priest's voice sounded thin and low: neither could hear what he said; the congregation made rapid responses regularly, but eliding the, to them, familiar words.
From Simon Called Peter by Keable, Robert
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.
