EFFACE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does efface mean? 

• EFFACE (verb)
  The verb EFFACE has 3 senses:

1. remove completely from recognition or memory

2. make inconspicuous

3. remove by or as if by rubbing or erasing

  Familiarity information: EFFACE used as a verb is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• EFFACE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they efface    ... he / she / it effaces   
Past simple: effaced   
Past participle: effaced   
-ing form: effacing   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Remove completely from recognition or memory

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Synonyms:

efface; obliterate

Context example:

efface the memory of the time in the camps

Hypernyms (to "efface" is one way to...):

blur; dim; slur (become vague or indistinct)

Verb group:

blot out; hide; obliterate; obscure; veil (make undecipherable or imperceptible by obscuring or concealing)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Sense 2

Meaning:

Make inconspicuous

Classified under:

Verbs of feeling

Context example:

efface oneself

Hypernyms (to "efface" is one way to...):

humble (cause to be unpretentious)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s somebody

Derivation:

effacement (withdrawing into the background; making yourself inconspicuous)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Remove by or as if by rubbing or erasing

Classified under:

Verbs of touching, hitting, tying, digging

Synonyms:

efface; erase; rub out; score out; wipe off

Context example:

Please erase the formula on the blackboard--it is wrong!

Hypernyms (to "efface" is one way to...):

cancel; delete (remove or make invisible)

"Efface" entails doing...:

rub (move over something with pressure)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "efface"):

sponge (erase with a sponge; as of words on a blackboard)

cut out; scratch out (strike or cancel by or as if by rubbing or crossing out)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something

 Context examples 

Miss Oliver is ever surrounded by suitors and flatterers: in less than a month, my image will be effaced from her heart.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

No new impressions could efface those which are so deeply cut.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

All day he effaced himself in the store, reserving for the evening, with his family, the privilege of being himself.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

The hallmark of EPEC/EHEC infections is induction of attaching and effacing (A/E) lesions that damage intestinal epithelial cells.

(Pathogenic Escherichia coli Infection Pathway, NCI Thesaurus/KEGG)

It has left an impression which can never be effaced from my mind.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I had an obscure feeling that all was not over and that he would still commit some signal crime, which by its enormity should almost efface the recollection of the past.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

You shouldn't push until your uterus is fully effaced and dilated.

(Childbirth, Dept. of Health and Human Services Office on Women's Health)

Why, too, should he faint at an allusion to the half-effaced initials upon his arm, and die of fright when he had a letter from Fordingbridge?

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I began one, “How can I ever hope, my dear Agnes, to efface from your remembrance the disgusting impression”—there I didn't like it, and then I tore it up.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

All Lucy's loveliness had come back to her in death, and the hours that had passed, instead of leaving traces of decay's effacing fingers, had but restored the beauty of life, till positively I could not believe my eyes that I was looking at a corpse.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)