erosion
/ɪˈɹoʊʒən/noun
erosion is spelled E-R-O-S-I-O-N: 7 letters and 3 syllables. It appears 4.4 times per million words in written English, the 12,216th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, erosion means “The result of having been worn away or eroded, as by a glacier on rock or the sea on a cliff face” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of erosion is erosions.
How many letters and syllables are in erosion?
| Letters | 7: E-R-O-S-I-O-N |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 4.4 times per million words; the 12,216th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Rhymes with |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How common is erosion?
Erosion appears 4.4 times per million words in written English, the 12,216th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce erosion?
- UK /ɪˈɹəʊʒən/
- US /ɪˈɹoʊʒən/
- US /əˈɹoʊʒən/
Erosion has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-erosion.oga, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What rhymes with erosion?
2 words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as erosion from its last stressed vowel (/oʊʒən/):
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of erosion
- erosions plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does erosion mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
The result of having been worn away or eroded, as by a glacier on rock or the sea on a cliff face.
Father Ted: The cliffs were gone? How could they just disappear? Dougal: Erosion.
- 2
The changing of a surface by mechanical action, friction, thermal expansion contraction, or impact.
- 3
The gradual loss of something as a result of an ongoing process.
the erosion of a person's trust
- 4
Destruction by abrasive action of fluids.
- 5
One of two fundamental operations in morphological image processing from which all other morphological operations are derived.
- 6
Loss of tooth enamel due to non-bacteriogenic chemical processes.
- 7
A shallow ulceration or lesion, usually involving skin or epithelial tissue.
- 8
In morphology, a basic operation (denoted ⊖); see Erosion (morphology).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Erosion in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense the result of having being eroded:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does erosion come from?
From Middle French erosion, from Latin ērōsiō (“eating away”), derived from ērōdō. The first known occurrence in English was in the 1541 translation by Robert Copland of Guy de Chauliac's medical text The Questyonary of Cyrurygens. Copland used erosion to describe how ulcers developed in the mouth. By 1774 erosion was used outside medical subjects. Oliver Goldsmith employed the term in the more contemporary geological context, in his book Natural History, with the quote : "Bounds are thus put to the erosion of the earth by water."
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).