Word.ws English Dictionary

under erasure

under erasure prepositional phrase: of a piece of text, written and struck through; hence, figuratively in some sense both present and absent.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) Of a piece of text, written and struck through; hence, figuratively in some sense both present and absent.
    • fol. 66 b l. 13 the letters under erasure were something like cacis.1904, W. O. E. Oesterley, "The Old Latin Texts of the Minor Prophets", in The Journal of Theological Studies, Clarendon Press, page 94
    • It is not unlike Derrida’s device of writing under erasure in which a term of metaphysics is used at the same time that it is cancelled out.1963, in Journal of the History of Philosophy, University of California Press, page 192

Origin of under erasure

Perhaps a calque of French sous rature

Questions about under erasure

What does under erasure mean?
Under erasure means of a piece of text, written and struck through; hence, figuratively in some sense both present and absent.
What part of speech is under erasure?
Under erasure is a prepositional phrase.

Words near under erasure in the dictionary

  1. under control
  2. under correction
  3. under cover
  4. under cover of darkness
  5. under cover of night
  6. under erasure
  7. under fire
  8. under glass
  9. under ground
  10. under hack
  11. under hatches

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: under erasure (page history and authors). 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.

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