raze
Americanverb (used with object)
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razes,
present (3rd person singular)
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razed,
past participle, past
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razing
present participle
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to tear down; demolish; level to the ground.
to raze a row of old buildings.
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to shave or scrape off.
verb
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to demolish (a town, buildings, etc) completely; level (esp in the phrase raze to the ground )
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to delete; erase
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archaic to graze
Synonym Usage
See destroy.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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razesimple
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razessimple
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have razedperfect
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has razedperfect
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am razingprogressive
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are razingprogressive
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is razingprogressive
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have been razingperfect progressive
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has been razingperfect progressive
Past
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razedsimple
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had razedperfect
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was razingprogressive
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were razingprogressive
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had been razingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of raze
1540–50; Middle English rasen < Middle French raser < *Vulgar Latin rāsāre to scrape, frequentative of Latin rādere to scrape
Explanation
Raze means to tear an object down to the ground. Before a real estate developer can raze a family's home to build another skyscraper, he's going to have to cut them a big check. Raze is most often used to refer to knocking buildings down for construction projects, but it can also describe tearing down other objects. You can raze the sand dunes in order to make the beach perfectly flat. Raze comes from the word rasen, meaning "to scrape or erase," and it sounds similar to the word erase, which can help you remember its meaning. If you raze something, in a way it has been erased — it no longer exists in its previous form.
Vocabulary lists containing raze
The Tragedy of Macbeth
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A Tale of Two Cities
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Beowulf
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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:
According to reports, he plans to raze the other two properties—for which he paid a combined $147 million—and live in the most recent purchase while awaiting construction to be completed.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 10, 2026
Melton said it pains him to raze the downtown convention center, built in 1981, because it was the brainchild of the city’s first Black mayor, Richard Hatcher.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 4, 2026
Less than a year after watching flames raze his home in the Altadena foothills, Ted Koerner has moved into a brand new house, one of the first to rebuild in this Los Angeles suburb.
From Barron's ● Jan. 4, 2026
It was only on Wednesday, a full two days after the demolition had started, that the administration admitted that the plan was to raze the entire East Wing.
From Salon ● Oct. 25, 2025
They are going to raze the Time and a Half Pool Hall, where feet in long tan shoes once pointed down from chair rungs.
From "Sula" by Toni Morrison
"Destructive human activities, like seafloor dredging, which razes entire marine communities, have turned seafloors into structurally simplified habitats with little settlement substrata or localised adult oysters to seed recovery," says Dr McAfee.
From Science Daily ● May 9, 2024
Amy and Danny's energy toward one another trades sweetness and consideration for the type of unhinged passion that razes lives to nothing but ash.
From Salon ● Apr. 12, 2023
Today, 73 percent of Arlington’s residentially zoned land is single-family, meaning that if a developer razes a house, it may be replaced only with another single-family house.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 17, 2023
One plan largely preserves the George C. Page Museum, another lays another story on top, while the last razes the museum and relocates the tar pits’ famous mammoth statues to a new museum building.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 31, 2019
The motive that shears the trees also razes the copse, in order that the gardener or "improver" may show his art.
From Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) by L. H. (Liberty Hyde) Bailey
Local authorities deployed two water-bombing helicopters against the flames that have razed at least 127 hectares of national park land to date, fire official Bambang Setyo Antoko told AFP.
From Barron's ● Aug. 7, 2026
Before the home was fully razed, Franklin snapped up the land on which it sat for $6 million, according to The Wall Street Journal.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 20, 2026
Last January, Spencer Pratt’s house in Pacific Palisades was razed by the raging flames of the Palisades Fire.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 13, 2026
But satellite imagery shows several olive trees around the house razed to the ground.
From BBC ● Apr. 23, 2026
Bands of displaced peasants roamed the razed countryside, fighting the crows for gleanings.
From "Strange the Dreamer" by Laini Taylor
In 2021 the Chicago Bears signed a purchase agreement for land at a former racetrack in nearby Arlington Heights, with the intention of razing the existing facility and building a new stadium.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 1, 2026
The two largest blazes—the Palisades fire and the Eaton fire—ripped through entire communities, razing hundreds of properties, many of which remain nothing more than empty lots.
From MarketWatch ● Mar. 3, 2026
The "Black Summer" bushfires raged across Australia's eastern seaboard from late 2019 to early 2020, razing millions of hectares, destroying thousands of homes and blanketing cities in noxious smoke.
From Barron's ● Jan. 8, 2026
One by one, the anchors holding people in place - home, community, family - have been loosened by the constant uprooting of Gaza's population and the razing of its neighbourhoods and streets.
From BBC ● Oct. 8, 2025
Despite his struggles with the Church He knocked the barons off their perch, Fifteen hundred Castles razing In a manner quite amazing.
From A Humorous History of England by Charles Harrison
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.
