under erasure
- adjective
- /ˈʌndər ɪˈreɪʃər/
- Literature
:
bajo borrado
- In his manuscript, the author's statement was marked under erasure to reflect its tentative nature.
- placed under erasure
Examples
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Such "writing under erasure" is a long-standing practice in Jewish literary tradition.
Academic text (1992) -
The word is therefore asserted and simultaneously placed under erasure.
Academic text (1992) -
During Temple times, then, the Divine Presence was also placed under erasure, existent yet withdrawn.
Academic text (1992) -
Talmudic Ambiguity and Temple Sanctity "Under Erasure"
Academic text (1992) -
Like liturgical gestures, certain spaces and artistic motifs present in synagogues are also placed under erasure.
Academic text (1992) -
The Temple itself is evoked in the synagogue, yet denied; it is placed under erasure, which recapitulates Robert Goldenberg's idea of the submerged Temple.
Academic text (1992) -
This is made clear, programmatically as it were, already in the first paragraph on the hero's personal prehistory, where the search for historical documentation is put under erasure from the outset:
Academic text (2004) -
It could be said that the term "connaître" is put under erasure, allowing the play of "être" to be foregrounded.
Academic text (1990) -
In Brian McHale's useful inventory of characteristic impossibilities, he discusses what he calls sous-rature worlds, worlds under erasure, which are usually withdrawn immediately after their construction only to be reinvoked.
Academic text (1995) -
Indeed, domination per se is questioned, as the dominant perspective—whether that of an omniscient narrator or other focalizing agents—is placed under erasure.
Academic text (2018)
How Visible
392
1.0
- Literature
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase composes 'under' (subject to/in the state of) with 'erasure' (the visible trace of removal), so a learner who knows both words can reasonably infer it means being subject to erasure or marked as erased. However, the specific scholarly nuance—crossed out but left visible to indicate provisionality or problematic status—is a specialized use not fully predictable from the constituents, so it is only partially transparent.
Etymology
Under erasure comes from the picture of a word written and then crossed out as an erasure, but still left visible under the line. That shows the word is marked as 'cancelled' or uncertain, so today under erasure means a word or idea is noted but not fully accepted.