erode

«erode» in Mova's school dictionary: to wear away slowly, as wind, water or ice rub away rock… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 3 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

verb (erode, erodes, eroded, eroding); noun erosion

meaning for a pupil

1) To erode means to wear away slowly, as wind, water or ice rub away rock and soil. tree →

2) To erode can mean to make something slowly weaker or smaller, like trust or confidence being eroded. tree →

sense in the lessons

A key geography and science word: rivers erode valleys, waves erode cliffs, rain erodes soil. In everyday talk and news it means something is getting slowly weaker. Phrases: «erode away», «be eroded by the sea», «erode trust».

examples

• The waves erode the cliffs a little every year. tree →
• Rivers erode rock and carry it downstream. tree →
• Wind can erode sand dunes. tree →
• Trees help stop the soil from eroding. tree →
• The old statue's face had eroded in the rain. tree →
• Telling lies can erode your friends' trust. tree →
• Over thousands of years the river eroded a deep canyon. tree →
• Soil erosion happens when plants are cut down. tree →

note

Regular verb: eroded, eroding. Noun: erosion. Erosion is moving bits away; weathering is breaking rock where it stands; the two often happen together. Erosion is slow, so «erode» usually suggests a long time.

In the corpora

• Clearing forests and ploughing can make soil erode many times faster than natural rates.
• Australia's Twelve Apostles are limestone stacks that are slowly collapsing as the sea erodes them.
• The Holderness coast in Yorkshire is one of Europe's fastest-eroding coasts, losing about 1-2 metres a year.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «erode» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.