Raze

Practice This Word

To destroy completely; to demolish or level to the ground.

verb

Raze

To destroy completely; to demolish or level to the ground.

verb

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Imagine This

Imagine a crumbling old theater in a town square. Bulldozers roll in, their blades gnashing through brick and timber until the structure is razed, leaving a flat, empty lot.

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Sounds Like

reɪz

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Looks Like

Looks like 'raise' (same pronunciation).

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Remember This

Raze and raise are commonly confused; raze means destroy, raise means lift or build up. Both are pronounced the same.

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Other Forms

razedadjective

razedverb

razingnoun

razingverb

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Connect With

demolish, destroy, flatten, level, pull down; common confusion with raise

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Note

Use raze when you mean destruction. The noun form is the razing of something; you can say 'to raze a building' or 'the razing of the building.'

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Study Deeper

Examples

The city council voted to raze the old factory to make way for a park.
During the war, many villages were razed to the ground.

Synonyms

demolishdestroylevelflattenpull down

Antonyms

buildconstructerect

Etymology

From Old French razer 'to shave, erase; to destroy' from Vulgar Latin roots related to rasus 'shaved' and radere 'to scrape'. The sense is 'to scrape down to the ground'.

Mnemonic

Raze sounds like raise but means destroy. Imagine a giant razor shaving a building down to the ground.