efface

"You may have the power to bring down the government. But you cannot efface reality," he said.

From BBC ● Sep. 8, 2025

It’s exceedingly unlikely that Leo had anything to do with her murder, but the show doesn’t efface her tragedy, even as it reckons with the gravity of Leo’s.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 20, 2025

The novel derives its memorable title from Laila’s admonition that the narrator efface her idiosyncrasies, the better to morph into a version of her mother.

From New York Times ● Nov. 24, 2020

But some feel privileging an object’s “universal” value can efface the particular history in which it is inscribed, as well as the experiences of the individuals who made it.

From Washington Post ● Aug. 8, 2018

It was as though Mona had once been marked, but had since chosen to efface the symbol—or to erase it.

From "Huntress" by Malinda Lo

But some may feel that the warm welcome Omar receives from the enslaved workers at Owen’s plantation effaces the harsher reality of the character’s circumstance.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 23, 2022

In a compassionate but nuanced telling, the novel effectively effaces assumptions of superiority and inferiority, good and bad.

From New York Times ● Aug. 5, 2021

Indeed, each film effaces the collective aspects of the assassination research by presenting the historiographic challenges of the period as essentially the work of one man.

From Slate ● Jul. 21, 2017

It’s an enormous story, one that, in the telling, nearly effaces Wilkerson’s presence onstage.

From The New Yorker ● Mar. 8, 2017

I once beheld on earth celestial graces, And heavenly beauties scarce to mortals known, Whose memory lends nor joy nor grief alone, But all things else bewilders and effaces.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 119, September, 1867 by Various

Such weird scenes inside this once-mysterious world have been totally effaced, now that every musician can curate his own image on social media.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 27, 2025

Although written in fire and effaced in ash, these deaths all become recognizable as messages of protest, refusal and resistance in reference to Bouazizi’s act.

From Salon ● May 4, 2024

But that timing dates back to when broadcast television dominated — both in viewership and Emmys contenders — in a way that has been effaced by cable television and streaming services.

From Seattle Times ● Aug. 10, 2023

The tower was locked and the mural effaced.

From Slate ● Oct. 28, 2022

João de Barros was able to claim in 1555 that Hercules’ pillars, ‘which he set up at our very doorstep, as it were,...have been effaced from human memory and thrust into silence and oblivion’.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton

These animals, the creation of inspired puppet designer Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell, are fluidly deployed by a team of graceful puppeteers, who preserve the essential dignity of these creatures without effacing their ferocity.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 9, 2025

And thus, too, began his lifelong strategy of effacing himself from his work.

From Washington Post ● Sep. 29, 2021

Classical realism is sometimes accused of effacing its own literary labor; the cost of Tokarczuk’s flâneurial freedom is that it effaces the labor of travel.

From The New Yorker ● Sep. 24, 2018

Apart from all this, maybe the most potent force effacing gay culture is an understandable, if still covert, impulse to jettison the trauma of the queer legacy.

From Slate ● Jun. 25, 2018

Then I saw a shadow flit across her face, and she drew back against the wall, effacing herself, as a step sounded outside and Maxim came into the room.

From "Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier