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In medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, a series of dots was used to mark mistakes or to label material that should be deleted from a text, and those deletion dots can help you remember the history of expunge. They were known as puncta delentia. The puncta part of the name derives from the Latin verb pungere, which can be translated as "to prick or sting" (and you can imagine that a scribe may have felt stung when their mistakes were so punctuated in a manuscript). Pungere is also an ancestor of expunge, as well as a parent of other dotted, pointed, or stinging terms such as punctuate, compunction, poignant, puncture, and pungent.
Synonyms
Examples of expunge in a Sentence
Jade Gomez, People.com, 14 Oct. 2024
The Court of Appeal rejected this, on the grounds that Evans's evidence was at times contentious, but not so tenuous as to need expunging.
—The Week Uk, theweek, 28 July 2024
By the end of 2022 Ferrari’s felony record was legally expunged.
—Brandon Kochkodin, Forbes, 8 Oct. 2024
These bills aren’t some bizarre push to allow prisoners to refuse to do any chores but an effort to finally expunge the last vestiges of de jure involuntary servitude and slavery from our system.
—Letters To The Editor, The Mercury News, 16 Sep. 2024
See all Example Sentences for expunge 
Dictionary Entries Near expunge
Cite this Entry
“Expunge.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/expunge. Accessed 5 Nov. 2024.
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expunge
transitive verb
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