erode
[ih-rohd]
- to eat into or away; destroy by slow consumption or disintegration: Battery acid had eroded the engine. Inflation erodes the value of our money.
- to form (a gully, butte, or the like) by erosion.
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- to become eroded.
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Origin of erode
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for erode
Contemporary Examples
That started to erode after the two officers were assaulted last week.
De Blasio and the New York City Protesters Have No Blood on Their HandsJacob Siegel
December 22, 2014
It serves as a potent reminder that the cost in lives of one war can erode the will of a people to fight another.
Failure to secure their quick release can erode voter confidence and advertise the impotence of government.
Admittedly, a lot of undeserved cultural authority will have to erode before this idealization can materialize.
Alternatively, passing up a shot could allow an enemy to escape, kill U.S. citizens, and erode U.S. power.
Historical Examples
This limit of the level of the sea beneath which they cannot erode is known as baselevel.
The Elements of GeologyWilliam Harmon Norton
Secure in its grip, these are used as graving-tools to erode its bed.
The Home of the BlizzardDouglas Mawson
There has not been time to erode them away since the Pleistocene glaciation.
Climatic ChangesEllsworth Huntington
It has been, and is being, created by sediments from the many torrents that erode the interior mountains.
Area Handbook for AlbaniaEugene K. Keefe
To erode a stratum 5000 feet thick will require at this rate thirty million years.
Pioneers of ScienceOliver Lodge
erode
- to grind or wear down or away or become ground or worn down or away
- to deteriorate or cause to deterioratejealousy eroded the relationship
- (tr; usually passive) pathol to remove (tissue) by ulceration
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Word Origin
C17: from Latin ērōdere, from ex- 1 + rōdere to gnaw
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for erode
v.
1610s, a back-formation from erosion, or else from French éroder, from Latin erodere "to gnaw away, consume" (see erosion). Related: Eroded; eroding. Originally of acids, ulcers, etc.; geological sense is from 1830.
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
erode
(ĭ-rōd′)- To wear away by or as if by abrasion.
- To eat into; ulcerate.
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The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary
Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.