Word.ws English Dictionary

erosion

UK/ɪˈɹəʊʒən//ɪˈɹoʊʒən/

erosion noun: the result of having been worn away or eroded, as by a glacier on rock or the sea on a cliff face.

erosion: the result of having been worn away or eroded, as by a glacier on rock or the sea on a cliff face
Image: Wing-Chi Poon, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

erosion (countable and uncountable, plural erosions)

  1. (uncountable) The result of having been worn away or eroded, as by a glacier on rock or the sea on a cliff face.
    • Father Ted: The cliffs were gone? How could they just disappear?
      Dougal: Erosion.1995, Graham Linehan & al., "Good Luck, Father Ted", Father Ted Series 1, Episode 1, Channel Four
    • Even second-generation biofuels, made from crop wastes or wood, are an environmental disaster, either extending the cultivated area or removing the straw and stovers which protect the soil from erosion and keep carbon and nutrients in the ground.2012 August 24, George Monbiot, Guardian Weekly, page 20
  2. (uncountable) The changing of a surface by mechanical action, friction, thermal expansion contraction, or impact.
  3. (figuratively, uncountable) The gradual loss of something as a result of an ongoing process.
    • the erosion of a person's trust
    • trademark erosion, caused by everyday use of the trademarked term
  4. (uncountable) Destruction by abrasive action of fluids.
  5. (image processing) One of two fundamental operations in morphological image processing from which all other morphological operations are derived.
  6. Loss of tooth enamel due to non-bacteriogenic chemical processes.
  7. A shallow ulceration or lesion, usually involving skin or epithelial tissue.
  8. In morphology, a basic operation (denoted ⊖); see Erosion (morphology).

erosion meaning in Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Gujarati

erosion in Tamil

அரிப்பு, அரிமானம், சிறிது சிறுதாக அரித்தல், மண்அரிப்பு, கடலரிப்பு, பனிக்கட்டி

erosion in Malayalam

അപരദനം, ദ്രവിക്കൽ, ദ്രവീകരണം

erosion in Kannada

ಸವೆತ

erosion in Gujarati

ધોવાણ
More languagesFewer languages
erosion in Odia
କ୍ଷରଣ
erosion in Nepali
क्षरण
erosion in Tagalog
us-os, sapudpod, pagkapudpod
erosion in Persian
اروزیون eroziyon
erosion in Vietnamese
xói mòn

Examples of erosion in a sentence

  • The back and forth movement of the tide causes erosion of the coastline.
  • The planate, measuring several kilometres across, was formed by wind erosion.
  • The cultivation of the hillside led to soil erosion.

All 40 example sentences with erosion

Forms of erosion

pluralerosions

Plural of erosion: erosions

Origin of erosion

From Middle French erosion, from Latin ērōsiō (“eating away”), derived from ērōdō. The first known occurrence in English was in the 1541 translation by Robert Copland of Guy de Chauliac's medical text The Questyonary of Cyrurygens. Copland used erosion to describe how ulcers developed in the mouth. By 1774 erosion was used outside medical subjects. Oliver Goldsmith employed the term in the more contemporary geological context, in his book Natural History, with the quote : "Bounds are thus put to the erosion of the earth by water."

Words formed from erosion

Questions about erosion

What does erosion mean?
Erosion means the result of having been worn away or eroded, as by a glacier on rock or the sea on a cliff face.
What is erosion in Tamil?
Erosion in Tamil is அரிப்பு, அரிமானம், சிறிது சிறுதாக அரித்தல். See Erosion meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is erosion?
Erosion is a noun.
How do you pronounce erosion?
Erosion is pronounced /ɪˈɹəʊʒən/ (UK).
What is the plural of erosion?
The plural of erosion is erosions.

Words near erosion in the dictionary

  1. erosely
  2. Eroses
  3. erosibilities
  4. erosibility
  5. erosible
  6. erosion
  7. erosional
  8. erosionally
  9. erosionproof
  10. erosions
  11. erosive

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: erosion (page history and authors); erosion (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); erosion (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); erosion (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); erosion (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); erosion (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); erosion (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-erosion.oga.

Cite this entry: “erosion.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/erosion. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.