attritive

comparative more attritive · superlative most attritive

1. Causing attrition.

   1858, Hugh Miller, Rambles of a Geologist, Chapter 5, in The Cruise of the Betsey; with Rambles of a Geologist, Edinburgh: Constable, p. 302, […] the clay […] had gradually been moulded, under the attritive influences of the elements, into series of alternating ridges and furrows,

   3 more examples

   Do you mark how the wistaria, sun-impacted on this wall here, distills and penetrates this room as though (light-unimpeded) by secret and attritive progress from mote to mote of obscurity’s myriad components?

   1936, William Faulkner, chapter 5, in Absalom, Absalom!, New York: Random House

   That certain works did thus survive time’s attritive passage, and that people did continue to agree in their estimation of them would by no means show […] that their judgments were both objective and correct.

   1999, Christopher New, chapter 9, in Philosophy of Literature, London: Routledge, page 135

   From a nearby town came “crews of eager young men” who “pitched in” through the “attritive, swirling, arctic-like night.”

   2009 September 6, Tom Vanderbilt, “Up From Calamity”, in New York Times