Other forms: eroded, eroding, erodes
To erode is to wear something away little by little. Erode the cliff, erode confidence.
The slowness is the point, since anything sudden is a collapse rather than erosion. Trust erodes in the same way as a coastline, and both are far quicker to lose than to rebuild.
1verberodeTo wear something away little by little.
“The sea will erode another two metres of that field this winter.”
erode is a wearing away.
Latin erodere means to gnaw away, from e plus rodere, to gnaw.
Proto-Indo-European
*Hreh₃d-
Latin
ērōdō
French
éroder
English, today
erode
From French éroder, from Latin ērōdō.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Cutting & Breaking