expunge

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

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Arts, Literature, Language Courses, Education

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🗓️ 30 June 2025

⏱️ 2 minutes

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Summary

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 30, 2025 is:

expunge • \ik-SPUNJ\ • verb

To expunge something is to remove it completely, whether by obliterating it, striking it out, or marking it for deletion. Expunge is most commonly applied in cases in which documentation of something is removed from an official record.

// Due to an error, the charges were expunged from their record.

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Examples:

“... Bland et al. found that an offer to expunge a criminal record after participation in a rehabilitation program reduced crime as well as the measure of harm. This appears to indicate that motivation drives rehabilitation—which is important to consider in judging character in the present.” — Wendy L. Patrick, Psychology Today, 1 Dec. 2024

Did you know?

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—known as puncta delentia—can help you remember the history of expunge. Puncta comes 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.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's the Word of the Day podcast for June 30th.
0:11.1	At Matalan, the big summer sale is on.
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0:19.6	It's the perfect time to fill your basket with this season's
0:23.1	favourites head to your nearest store today or shop the sale online at matalan.com.uk
0:29.5	t's and sees apply today's word is expunge spelled ex p you and g e expunge is a verb to expunge something is-X-P-U-N-G-E. Expunge is a verb. To expunge something is to remove it completely,
0:42.2	whether by obliterating it, striking it out, or marking it for deletion. Expunge is most commonly applied
0:48.9	in cases in which documentation of something is removed from an official record. Here's the word used in a sentence
0:55.9	from psychology today. Bland et al found that an offer to expunge a criminal record after participation
1:03.6	in a rehabilitation program reduced crime as well as the measure of harm. This appears to indicate that motivation drives rehabilitation,
1:13.7	which is important to consider in judging character in the present.
1:17.8	In medieval and Renaissance manuscripts,
1:21.0	a series of dots was used to mark mistakes or to label material
1:25.3	that should be deleted from a text, and those deletion dots, known as Puncta delentia, can help you remember the history of the word expunge.
1:36.1	Puncta comes from the Latin verb, Pungare, which can be translated as to prick or sting, and you can imagine that a scribe may have felt stung when their
1:46.1	mistakes were so punctuated in a manuscript. Pungare is also an ancestor of the word expunge,
1:52.9	as well as a parent of other dotted, pointed, or stinging terms, such as punctuate,
1:59.0	compunction, poignant, puncture, and pungent. With your word of the day,
2:04.4	I'm Peter Sokolowski.

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