Delete vs. Erase

Hi there. You have a way with words.

Hi, it’s Trevor from Austin.

Hey, Trevor. Welcome.

What’s up, Trevor?

So I wanted to tell you guys about an experience we had with our eight-year-old son that I found really interesting.

You know, like a lot of the kids these days, right? He’s grown up with his iPad and does everything electronic, video games all the time, the usual kind of stuff.

But lately, during the pandemic, we’ve kind of coaxed the kids into doing more physical art, so drawing, painting, et cetera.

And he had mastered drawing a cat. And he was doing all these variations on drawing cats, and he brought it to me one evening.

And he said, hey, Dad, I want to show you this cat I drew. And he started talking me through it, and he said how he had misdrawn the tail.

And what he decided to do was delete the tail and redraw the tail. And I thought, delete, not erase?

And I didn’t say anything to him. I just kind of let it go, right?

And my wife and I were talking about it later. We thought, that’s really interesting.

We always talk about how things get transposed from one medium to another. And for my kids, when they remove something, even from a physical drawing, they delete it.

They don’t erase it. So I thought that was really interesting.

That’s super interesting.

Right.

Wow.

Yeah, it’s a language change happening before your very eyes.

But Trevor, wouldn’t you say that erase and delete are pretty good synonyms?

Yeah, I think so, right?

We talked about it later. We’re like, well, my wife was like, did you correct him?

And I said, no, I didn’t correct him. I think it’s probably proper usage in his mind, right?

And it didn’t seem wrong to us, right?

It’s funny that even all these years later, erase with a pencil eraser still has a connection to that original meaning of the word.

The etymological root is about scratching or scraping, the idea of scraping something off of a sheepskin or a parchment or paper.

Trevor, I was just wondering if your son’s peers use it that way as well.

Have you heard that?

I haven’t.

I would assume they do, but I haven’t had a chance to overhear the conversation.

During the pandemic, they’re quite private about when they’re talking to their friends.

Right.

Well, there is something that happens, Trevor, when a word, let’s just kind of play this out.

If delete took over for erase, there’s something called lexical borrowing between domains.

Domains are areas of speech special to a profession or a field, a technology or a behavior.

And so sometimes when we borrow, when we have lexical borrowing, sometimes the meaning narrows and sometimes it widens.

In this case, delete seems to be widening.

So it’s widening beyond the technical definition, the technology definition of delete to include the analog offline definition of erase.

And so sometimes when that lexical borrowing widens, it becomes a complete synonym for another word that already existed.

And sometimes one of them then becomes obsolete.

So that’s what could happen.

There’s a really good example in the history of English.

In 1490, William Caxton, who was a publisher, tells a story that someone from the north of England tried to buy eggs from someone in the south of England.

But in the north, they used eggs, E-G-G-E-S, from Old Norse.

And in the south, they used erin, E-Y-R-E-N, from Old English.

And these two people didn’t understand each other.

They didn’t know that they were both talking about the same thing.

They were both talking about eggs.

Of course, we know now that the Old Norse word for eggs won out.

These two perfect synonyms competed for a while, and one won, and the other one disappeared.

And so maybe that’s what could happen with delete versus erase.

Say, I don’t know, maybe our great-grandkids or our great-great-grandkids would find out.

Yeah, that’s really interesting.

But in the meantime, I guess the question is, do you correct a kid for using the term delete when they’re trying to erase it?

I’m inclined to, well, what are you inclined to do, Trevor?

I wouldn’t correct it, right?

Mostly just because I’m fascinated by the language and I want to see,

I’ve kind of pushed that usage a little bit and see what happens.

But, yeah, I don’t think I would correct it, right?

And I wonder if we’ll get to a spot still one day where the little eraser icon on the computer is called the deleter.

I kind of like that, even though it’s a weird word.

It’s just an automatically funny word, the deleter.

It’s like a superhero.

A funny action movie.

It’s like the action hero who never really quite does the job.

The deleter.

He splashes white out on everything.

Deleter.

You’ve been deleted.

I mean, I guess it’s an opportunity, too, to talk with him about the fact that there is more than one word for an action.

Oh, yeah, sure.

Well, eight years old, he’s still developing his vocabulary and his writing style and his language.

You know, it’ll be interesting to see when, say, he’s 18 or 20, does he still have this in his vocabulary?

And that’s something you can keep track of, Trevor.

Remember this conversation and find out when he’s 18 or 20 and see, does he use delete in that same way?

Yeah, awesome.

Right, so call us in 10 years.

Will do.

All right, take care, Trevor.

Thank you for the call and best of luck.

Thanks.

Be well.

Bye-bye.

I know our listeners have a lot of opinions about this.

Even this many decades into the technological revolution

That is desktop computers and the internet.

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Email words@waywordradio.org.