erosion
the act or state of eroding; state of being eroded.
the process by which the surface of the earth is worn away by the action of water, glaciers, winds, waves, etc.
the gradual decline or disintegration of something: Each candidate is blaming the other’s party for the erosion of international trade.
Origin of erosion
1Other words from erosion
- e·ro·sion·al, adjective
- an·ti·e·ro·sion, adjective
Words Nearby erosion
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use erosion in a sentence
More than $40 trillion of retirement savings is at risk of erosion if inflation returns.
After $20 trillion in pandemic relief spending, there’s still no sign of inflation. What happened? | Bernhard Warner | August 25, 2020 | FortuneA ProPublica-Texas Tribune investigation found that the Rio Grande Valley project suffered from major erosion just months after it was finished.
Federal Prosecutors Have Steve Bannon’s Murky Nonprofit in Their Sights | by Yeganeh Torbati | August 24, 2020 | ProPublicaA ProPublica-Tribune investigation found that the Rio Grande Valley project suffered from major erosion just months after it was finished.
Private Border Wall Fundraisers Have Been Arrested on Fraud Charges | by Perla Trevizo, Jeremy Schwartz and Lexi Churchill | August 20, 2020 | ProPublicaThe research team examined 10,276 individual valleys found in 66 valley networks on Mars, using custom-built algorithms to group them and infer what kind of erosion processes formed them.
Mars may not have been the warm, wet planet we thought it was | Neel Patel | August 7, 2020 | MIT Technology ReviewAdditionally, over the last 20 million years, the building of the Himalayas, Andes, Alps and other mountains has more than doubled erosion rates, boosting weathering.
How Earth’s Climate Changes Naturally (and Why Things Are Different Now) | Howard Lee | July 21, 2020 | Quanta Magazine
Focus on the gays—not on the economy, the erosion of civil society, or the lack of democracy.
The more socially conservative libertarian-conservatives worry about family cohesion and erosion of religious belief.
Up To A Point: My Problem With People Who Agree With Me | P. J. O’Rourke | July 20, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTAnd the health law might not prohibit it, opening a door to potential erosion of employer-based coverage.
While not as bad as some environmentalists have expected, there is beach erosion.
The result is a continual erosion of the business—fewer subscriptions sold, fewer print ads sold, even as costs rise annually.
Nowhere perhaps has the great water erosion of bygone aeons wrought more grotesquely and fantastically than in the Moqui basin.
Overland | John William De ForestThis erosion had been carried along the cañon on an even line of altitude as far as the softer layer extended.
Overland | John William De ForestOn steep slopes a certain number of trees must be left to protect the watershed and to prevent the erosion of the soil.
Our National Forests | Richard H. Douai BoerkerIts substance is well preserved; the surface was once highly polished, but now is pitted by erosion and discolored by age.
The Swastika | Thomas WilsonSastrugi, only six inches high, seen on the 26th, showed the effects of wind-erosion exquisitely.
The Home of the Blizzard | Douglas Mawson
British Dictionary definitions for erosion
/ (ɪˈrəʊʒən) /
the wearing away of rocks and other deposits on the earth's surface by the action of water, ice, wind, etc
the act or process of eroding or the state of being eroded
Derived forms of erosion
- erosive or erosional, adjective
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
Scientific definitions for erosion
[ ĭ-rō′zhən ]
The gradual wearing away of land surface materials, especially rocks, sediments, and soils, by the action of water, wind, or a glacier. Usually erosion also involves the transport of eroded material from one place to another, as from the top of a mountain to an adjacent valley, or from the upstream portion of a river to the downstream portion.
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Cultural definitions for erosion
A type of weathering in which surface soil and rock are worn away through the action of glaciers, water, and wind.
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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