expungement
- noun
- /ɪkˈspʌndʒmənt/
- After the judge granted his expungement, the charges against him were erased from all official documents.
Examples
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The lawyer filed for expungement to remove her client's criminal record from public access.
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The emphasis in aggressive expungement thus was, and is, on the perpetrator's youth and inexperience, rather than on the reality of his crimes and his unabated criminal tendencies.
Academic text (1998) -
Many people seek expungement to have their past mistakes removed from their permanent records.
Synonyms
Taking something or someone away from a place
The act of removing something you do not need
Complete removal of something unwanted
A person removes words or parts of a text when editing
The act of removing writing or information from a document
Removing information from a record so it no longer appears
Removing information completely from a record
Antonyms
How Complete
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
Expungement comes from the parts ex- 'out' and pungere 'to prick', so it once meant to 'prick out' or mark something off a page, like crossing out a line; you can see the same root in puncture 'to make a small hole'. So expungement now means completely erasing or removing something from a document, record, or memory.