wear away

Questions about wear away

What does wear away mean?

wear away means "cut away in small pieces". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for wear away?

Close synonyms include whittle away, whittle down, wear off, erode, gnaw. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is wear away a common word?

wear away is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.