erosion

Meaning

Noun

• The result of having been worn away or eroded, as by a glacier on rock or the sea on a cliff face.
• The changing of a surface by mechanical action, friction, thermal expansion contraction, or impact.
• The gradual loss of something as a result of an ongoing process.
• Destruction by abrasive action of fluids.
• One of two fundamental operations in morphological image processing from which all other morphological operations are derived.
• Loss of tooth enamel due to non-bacteriogenic chemical processes.
• A shallow ulceration or lesion, usually involving skin or epithelial tissue.
• In morphology, a basic operation (denoted ⊖); see Erosion (morphology).

Origin

• 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."