erase
Americanverb (used with object)
-
erases,
present (3rd person singular)
-
erased,
past participle, past
-
erasing
present participle
-
to rub or scrape out, as letters or characters written, engraved, etc.; efface.
- Synonyms:
- obliterate, expunge
- Antonyms:
- restore
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to eliminate completely.
She couldn't erase the tragic scene from her memory.
-
to obliterate (material recorded on magnetic tape or a magnetic disk).
She erased the message.
- Antonyms:
- restore
-
to obliterate recorded material from (a magnetic tape or disk).
He accidentally erased the tape.
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Computers. to remove (data) from computer storage.
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to exclude, replace, or refuse to recognize (the identity, experience, or contribution of a minority group or group member).
Framing rape as a woman’s issue erases men’s accounts of sexual violence from public discourse.
-
Slang. to murder.
The gang had to erase him before he informed on them.
verb (used without object)
-
erases,
present (3rd person singular)
-
erased,
past participle, past
-
erasing
present participle
-
to give way to effacement readily or easily.
-
to obliterate characters, letters, markings, etc., from something.
verb
-
to obliterate or rub out (something written, typed, etc)
-
(tr) to destroy all traces of; remove completely
time erases grief
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to remove (a recording) from (magnetic tape)
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(tr) computing to replace (data) on a storage device with characters representing an absence of data
Synonym Usage
See cancel.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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erasabilitynoun
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erasableadjective
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half-erasedadjective
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nonerasableadjective
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unerasableadjective
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unerasedadjective
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unerasingadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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erasesimple
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erasessimple
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have erasedperfect
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has erasedperfect
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am erasingprogressive
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are erasingprogressive
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is erasingprogressive
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have been erasingperfect progressive
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has been erasingperfect progressive
Past
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erasedsimple
-
had erasedperfect
-
was erasingprogressive
-
were erasingprogressive
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had been erasingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of erase
First recorded in 1595–1605; from Latin ērāsus (past participle of ērādere ), equivalent to ē- e- 1 + rāsus “scraped”; see raze
Explanation
When you erase something, you eliminate or delete it, often by physically wiping it out. It's easy to erase chalk from a blackboard, but not so easy to erase graffiti from the side of a building. There are several ways to erase: you can erase a pencil mark with an eraser; you can digitally erase information on your computer or recording device; and you can figuratively erase something by removing all evidence of it. Peaceful people hope to erase war from the earth, for example — to take away every last trace of it. The Latin root eradere means "scrape out."
Vocabulary lists containing erase
"American Names"
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5-letter words, List 1
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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:
The medications’ power to erase feelings of hunger and satiation threatens to upend the industry’s model for growth, where success has often meant selling as much food as possible.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 19, 2026
We’ve already seen Big Tech names like Meta and Google erase user data and impose limits on virtual storage as A.I. expenditures balloon and memory becomes more expensive.
From Slate ● Aug. 18, 2026
Do not assume that writing a check back to the employer will erase the income when it comes to your ACA subsidy.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 14, 2026
That disruption can scatter electrons and erase some of the performance gains engineers are trying to achieve.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 9, 2026
I give her my number, and she watches as I download the video and erase her message.
From "Finding Junie Kim" by Ellen Oh
But more than that, it obscures the reality and erases the history of transgender lives by diminishing the significant time, money, and effort many transgender people spend to align their body with their sex.
From Slate ● Jul. 7, 2026
“Their vessel leaves a smooth, filigree-edged road on the ocean that vanishes and erases itself,” Enda notices on her voyage, “so that they can never find their way back, even if they want to.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 29, 2026
“She erases a lot of mistakes out there,” Ogwumike said.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 23, 2026
At about 180 million years old, they formed during a time when animals were actively disturbing the seafloor worldwide, which normally erases delicate microbial textures.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 8, 2026
The rich warm chocolate overtakes my mouth, erases my mind, spinning me into a state of transcendence.
From "I'll Give You the Sun" by Jandy Nelson
When they returned through an airport or border, the stain of their original unlawful entry was erased.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 14, 2026
The tribunal concluded in a ruling last month that Rahman's misconduct was "fundamentally incompatible with continued registration" and erased him from the medical register allowing him to work as a doctor.
From BBC ● Aug. 4, 2026
U.S. stocks on Friday closed out a brutal month that erased a chunk of the summer’s gains in technology names.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 1, 2026
Citizen detectives like Diarra Brickland, who arranges her messy life around ensuring that the people and prizes typically overlooked or quietly erased by the mainstream keep being seen, are even less common.
From Salon ● Aug. 1, 2026
He looked at a scene where someone leapt off a building, and he could tell that Javier had erased one part of El Gran Misterio’s leg over and over again, trying to get it right.
From "Anger Is a Gift" by Mark Oshiro
The film, which was directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, follows Peter Parker as he struggles with changes to his powers and lives in isolation after erasing his identity.
From Barron's ● Aug. 16, 2026
If you haven’t been following the controversy, Wilson felt that Nolan had flattened the saga by mostly erasing the Greek gods and Odysseus’ wit, lust and thorny contradictions.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 4, 2026
Both stocks and bonds saw wild swings, while the dollar finished 0.5% lower — more than erasing all of its gains from earlier in the month, based on the performance of the ICE U.S.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 29, 2026
By erasing history, the state institutionalized moral hazard.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 26, 2026
He corrects himself, starting “again with passion,” erasing, and finally wearing “a hole in the paper with the rubbing of the eraser.”
From "Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers" by Deborah Heiligman
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.
