Find the word definition

Crossword clues for erosive

The Collaborative International Dictionary
Erosive

Erosive \E*ro"sive\, a. That erodes or gradually eats away; tending to erode; corrosive.
--Humble.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
erosive

1725, of tumors, etc.; 1827 in geology, from eros-, past participle stem of Latin erodere "gnaw away" (see erode) + -ive.

Wiktionary
erosive

a. 1 of or pertaining to erosion 2 causing or tending to cause erosion

WordNet
erosive
  1. adj. wearing away by friction; "the erosive effects of waves on the shoreline"

  2. of a substance, especially a strong acid; capable of destroying or eating away by chemical action [syn: caustic, corrosive, vitriolic]

Usage examples of "erosive".

Craters with slumped walls, with modest depth-to-diameter ratios, with fine particles accumulated in their interiors tend to be more ancient, because they had to be around long enough for these erosive processes to come into play.

Looking up at immense ancient buildings whose soaring stone facades had been carved by the virulent erosive air and acid rains into a phantasmagoria of accidental Gothic parapets and turrets and pinnacles and asymmetrical spires.

When the four moons got together and started to pull they would raise a tremendous mass of water, a grinding power that would slice away the continent edges like no erosive force in history.

Fifteen paces on, they stumbled into an outcropping of quartzite or some other crystalline mineral that resisted the erosive wind.

Up close in this light, indifferent to human chronologies and subject only to the slow erosive forces of geological time, it reared above me like a frowning, terrifying crag.

This was standard procedure: if you found gold or diamonds in streambeds, you moved upstream toward the presumed erosive source of the minerals.