erasure
Americannoun
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erasures
plural
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an act or instance of erasing.
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a place where something has been erased; a spot or mark left after erasing.
You can't sign a contract with so many erasures in it.
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the exclusion of a minority group or group member from the historical record, or from the discussion of current events: black victim erasure in the crime-bill debate.
erasure of female scientists from textbooks;
black victim erasure in the crime-bill debate.
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the replacement or whitewashing of a minority character or group with a member or members of the dominant cultural group in fictional representations of historical events.
minority erasure in film.
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the denial of an individual’s or group’s minority identity, or the misidentification of a minority group member: cultural erasure and white identity among Chicanos.
trans-erasure issues in the LGBT community;
cultural erasure and white identity among Chicanos.
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noun
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the act or an instance of erasing
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the place or mark, as on a piece of paper, where something has been erased
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of erasure
Explanation
Erasure is the act of erasing, deleting, or removing something. It's tricky to write an essay on a typewriter instead of a computer, because it's hard to hide any erasures. An erasure can be made, appropriately, by erasing pencilled words with an eraser, but there are many other kinds of erasure. You can experience an accidental erasure of a whole day's work by hitting the wrong button on your laptop, and you can choose to hide details of your past with the kind of erasure that involves leaving certain information out when you tell your story. The Latin root is eradere, "scrape off" or "remove."
Vocabulary lists containing erasure
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:
On top of its potential communicative importance and intrinsic value as a cultural behavior, accumulative stone throwing involves durable primate material culture, the loss of which would constitute the erasure of primate heritage.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 28, 2026
At the lows of this latest bear market, bitcoin had seen the erasure of more than 50% of its value compared with its October 2025 record high above $126,000.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 21, 2026
It was, paradoxically, the erasure of border controls within Europe that led to its first attempts to seriously tighten its borders beyond.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 7, 2026
The arrival of the state-of-the-art facility and erasure of a field that featured the name of Kennedy, according to a complaint obtained by The Times, has caused him “reputational harm,” “embarrassment” and “humiliation.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2026
The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.
From "1984" by George Orwell
In his book, Mr. Gibbs focuses on problematic erasures and distortions that occur in a musicology based on European tradition.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 24, 2026
How much money streamers save through these erasures is unclear.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 7, 2023
The erasures are relentless, and so is the reinvention.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 22, 2022
The erasures won’t eliminate the evidence entirely, however.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 1, 2022
This sketch of Theo the boy is full of cross-outs, erasures, holes, blank spaces.
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.
