erasure

plural erasures

1. countableuncountableThe action of erasing; deletion; obliteration.

   The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.

   1949 June 8, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], “Chapter 7”, in Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC; republished [Australia]: Project Gutenberg of Australia, August 2001

   1 more example

   An inroad on the strongbox, or an erasure in the ledger, or a missummation in a fitted account, could hardly have surprised him more disagreeably.

   1817 December 31 (indicated as 1818), [Walter Scott], Rob Roy. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC

   Synonyms: cancelation, cancellation, canceling, cancelling, deleting, deletion, erasing, obliterating

2. countableuncountableThe state of having been erased; total blankness.

   Bush, even when he had the floor, grimaced as he spoke, except on several occasions when he lost his way and a look of total erasure came over him, a blank, stricken stare for which the French, alas, have the most apt expression: like a cow watching a train go by.

   2004 October 18, The New Yorker

   Synonyms: blankness

3. countableuncountableThe place where something has been erased.

   There were several erasures on the paper.

4. countableuncountablehuman sciencesA tendency to ignore or conceal an element of society.

   bisexual erasure