Abrasive

 WORD OF THE DAY

abrasive / adjective / uh-BRAY-siv

Definition
1a: causing damage, wear, or removal of surface material by grinding or rubbing
1b: tending to abrade
2: causing irritation
3: a substance (such as emery or pumice) used for abrading, smoothing, or polishing

Examples
"During the late fall and winter, frequent snowfall and abrasive sidewalk salt can damage the design of a holiday doormat within weeks."
— Valerie Jacobsen, KDVR (Denver, Colorado), 29 Oct. 2021

Lemons make a wonderful cleaning tool thanks to the antibacterial properties of their acidic juice, and the abrasive quality of salt works well to scrub cutting boards.
— Samantha Hunter, Better Homes & Gardens, 12 Nov. 2021

Did You Know?
Once upon a time, English had two different but similarly derived words meaning "to wear down": abrade and abrase.
However, in this fairy tale, only one of the two had a happy ending; while abrade remains a familiar word to modern English speakers, abrase has become quite rare.
And yet, abrase lives on in its descendant abrasive, which was formed by combining the verb with the -ive suffix.
Both of the verbs, and by extension abrasive, can be traced back to the Latin verb abradere, meaning "to scrape off."
Abradere in turn is a combination of ab- and radere, meaning "to scrape."