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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.
Examples of expunge in a Sentence
Zach Schonfeld, The Hill, 23 Apr. 2025
The Senate expunged the vote to clear the way for another vote on the bill.
—Michael R. Wickline, Arkansas Online, 16 Apr. 2025
Many activists use the day to highlight issues such as expunging criminal records for nonviolent cannabis offenses and ensuring equitable access to the cannabis industry for marginalized communities.
—Matt Rozo, The Mercury News, 25 Mar. 2025
Six weeks into the new administration, Wayback Machine director Graham said, the Internet Archive had cataloged some 73,000 web pages that had existed on U.S. government websites that were expunged after Trump's inauguration.
—Emma Bowman, NPR, 23 Mar. 2025
See All Example Sentences for expunge
Cite this Entry
“Expunge.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/expunge. Accessed 29 May. 2025.
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expunge
transitive verb
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