raze
Americanverb (used with object)
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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:
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
Should she decide to raze the existing dwelling, she may find herself facing some resistance, given its impressive architectural pedigree.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 29, 2025
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
The plan to raze the Hall of Administration is not set in stone, county officials said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 13, 2024
We had little sleep each night, not knowing when the bulldozers would come to raze our home.
From "Kaffir Boy: An Autobiography" by Mark Mathabane
"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
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
It razes nine to 15 houses a year.
From Washington Times ● Oct. 13, 2018
I have a gammon of bacon and two razes of Ginger to be delivered as far as Charing Cross. 1st Henry IV, act ii, sc.
From The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare by Ellacombe, Henry Nicholson
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
Mystic, once secluded from the road, is now entirely visible since the flood razed the stand of trees and vegetation that once screened off the outside world.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 18, 2026
Some of the buildings at the Thahtay Kyaung monastery, where saffron-clad monks cleared rubble from the wreckage by hand in the days after the quake, have been razed.
From Barron's ● Mar. 26, 2026
A catastrophic earthquake razed Cahokia in the beginning of the thirteenth century, knocking down the entire western side of Monks Mound.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
Instead, the city decided it could spend about $5.6 million razing them and prepping the hill for 100-plus multifamily units.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 14, 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
He contented himself, therefore, with razing the fortifications of Acre and Jaffa, of Samaria and Gaza.
From The Egypt of the Hebrews and Herodotos by Sayce, A. H. (Archibald Henry)
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.
