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In medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, a series of dots was used to mark mistakes or to label material that should be deleted from a text, and those deletion dots can help you remember the history of expunge. They were known as puncta delentia. The puncta part of the name derives from the Latin verb pungere, which can be translated as "to prick or sting" (and you can imagine that a scribe may have felt stung when their mistakes were so punctuated in a manuscript). Pungere is also an ancestor of expunge, as well as a parent of other dotted, pointed, or stinging terms such as punctuate, compunction, poignant, puncture, and pungent.
Synonyms
Examples of expunge in a Sentence
Jeremy Duda, Axios, 1 Nov. 2024
The bill does not include provisions to expunge past cannabis convictions or to allow the home cultivation of marijuana, which activists feared would lead the Supreme Court to block the measure based on state laws that limit ballot initiatives to a single subject.
—A.j. Herrington, Forbes, 29 Oct. 2024
Love boasts no inherent magic by which these differences may be neatly expunged; each one must be resolved, or left open, in the total concretion of experience.
—Andrea Long Chu, Vulture, 20 Sep. 2024
Upon completion, the musician's record will be expunged, Penn Live reported.
—Jade Gomez, People.com, 14 Oct. 2024
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Dictionary Entries Near expunge
Cite this Entry
“Expunge.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/expunge. Accessed 26 Nov. 2024.
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expunge
transitive verb
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