delete
/dɪˈliːt
/verb [with object]
1Remove or obliterate (written or printed matter), especially by drawing a line through it: the passage was deleted...
- But once the dogs of war started howling he deleted the fine print.
- The pharmacy deleted an important ingredient in your blood pressure management when it made this switch.
- I vote that the second half of the film be deleted, re-written, and re-filmed to completely focus on the time spent on The Farm.
Synonyms
remove, cut out, take out, edit out, expunge, excise, eradicate, cancel, unpublish;
cross out, strike out, put a line through, blue-pencil, ink out, score out, scratch out, obliterate, white out;
rub out, erase, efface, wipe out, blot out
Computing, informal kill
Printing dele
British trademark Tippex out
1.1Remove (data) from a computer’s memory: any program in memory will be deleted before the new one is loaded...
- Users are advised to update their antivirus software and delete any suspicious emails without opening them.
- In many cases, criminals think that they can permanently delete information from their computers by hitting Delete on the keyboard.
- Remove software by deleting them from the Program Files folder.
1.2Remove (a product, especially a recording) from the catalogue of those available for purchase: their EMI release has already been deleted...
- If none of these options is considered feasible, the company must decide how best to delete the product.
- Serious about their decision to leave the music business, the band deleted their back catalogue, which meant that after the existing records were sold no more would be pressed.
- Then they deleted their entire back catalogue.
1.3 (be deleted) Genetics (Of a section of genetic code, or its product) be lost or excised from a nucleic acid or protein sequence: if one important gene is deleted from an animal’s DNA, other genes can stand in...
- In this process new genes are created by repeated gene duplications, and some genes may later become pseudogenes or even be deleted from the genome.
- This may be related to the large size of the chromosomal DNA to be deleted, to polymorphism at this locus, or to specific effects of the donor DNA.
- As reported previously, at each insertion site some chromosomal DNA was deleted, most likely in conjunction with the integration event.
noun
A command or key on a computer which erases text: you can use delete to remove a number of lines from your program...
- I accidentally hit the tiny delete key instead of backspace.
- Because a CD-ROM is static, there will never be a delete or update.
- Great, but won't people have to have phones which can accept delete commands?
Derivatives
deletable
Origin
Late Middle English (in the sense 'destroy'): from Latin delet- 'blotted out, effaced', from the verb delere.
‘Destroy’ was the early recorded sense of delete, from Latin delere ‘blot out, efface’.