What is "type erasure"

n. (context software English) A compile-time process by which explicit type annotations are removed from a program, before run-time execution.

In programming languages, type erasure refers to the compile-time process by which explicit type annotations are removed from a program, before it is executed at run-time. Operational semantics that do not require programs to be accompanied by types are called type-erasure semantics, to be contrasted with type-passing semantics. The possibility of giving type-erasure semantics is a kind of abstraction principle, ensuring that the run-time execution of a program does not depend on type information. In the context of generic programming, the opposite of type erasure is called reification.