Definition of "erosion"

erosion

/əˈɹoʊʒən/

noun
countable and uncountable, plural erosions
1. (uncountable) The result of having been worn away or eroded, as by a glacier on rock or the sea on a cliff face.
  Quotations
  Father Ted: The cliffs were gone? How could they just disappear?Dougal: Erosion.
  1995, Graham Linehan & al., "Good Luck, Father Ted", Father Ted Series 1, Episode 1, Channel Four
  Even second-generation biofuels, made from crop wastes or wood, are an environmental disaster, either extending the cultivated area or removing the straw and stovers which protect the soil from erosion and keep carbon and nutrients in the ground.
  2012 August 24, George Monbiot, Guardian Weekly, page 20
2. (uncountable) The changing of a surface by mechanical action, friction, thermal expansion contraction, or impact.
3. (uncountable, figurative) The gradual loss of something as a result of an ongoing process.
  Quotations
  No social system that isn’t built upon the belief to the divine, or morality and traditional values, can withstand the erosion and degeneration of humankind’s morality, including democracy.
  2020 November 8, Si Xiang, “The U.S. Election Is a Battle Between Good and Evil”, in Minghui‎
4. (uncountable) Destruction by abrasive action of fluids.
5. (mathematics, image processing) One of two fundamental operations in morphological image processing from which all other morphological operations are derived.
6. (dentistry) Loss of tooth enamel due to non-bacteriogenic chemical processes.
7. (medicine) A shallow ulceration or lesion, usually involving skin or epithelial tissue.
8. (mathematics) In morphology, a basic operation (denoted ⊖); see Erosion (morphology).