erosion

Erosion comes from Middle French erosion, from Latin ērōsiō, meaning 'eating away,' which itself derives from the verb ērōdō.

The word entered English in 1541 in Robert Copland's medical translation, where it described ulcers eating away at tissue in the mouth. It wasn't until 1774, when Oliver Goldsmith used it in his Natural History to describe water wearing down the earth, that the word moved beyond medicine into the geological sense we know today.

Erosion shares its root with the Latin verb ērōdō, meaning 'to gnaw' or 'eat away,' which also gives English the word erode.