attrit
/əˈtɹɪt/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
6
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To wear down through attrition, especially mechanical attrition.
verb
To be reduced in quantity through attrition.
Example Sentences
- "[…] pebbles of vast size, or blocks of stone, attrited by water to smoothness, conjoined by a cement of mud."
- "the relatives who had been helping slipped away as I grew older, attriting for various reasons that all amounted to the same reason."
- "The interference theory of second language loss holds that forgetting is actually interference between the attriting language and the language replacing it."
- "The primary objective is to attrit the units sufficiently so that they cannot close with the units in contact."
- "Throughout the early part of the meeting, a human resources manager kept talking about “attrits," which we thought was some kind of financial product they were reducing or eliminating. It wasn't until she mentioned "minimizing severance options" that we realized she was talking about people."
Etymology
From Latin attrītus, past participle of atterō. Said by multiple dictionaries to be a back-formation from attrition, but it is not a recent one, being centuries old.
Origin
- Source language: Latin
Word Breakdown
- Root: attrītus