Definition of "detrition" []

• The act of wearing away by friction: beach pebbles worn smooth by detrition. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The reason for their growth, as a final cause, is their function, for they would soon be worn down if there were not some means of saving them; even as it is they are altogether worn down in old age in some animals which eat much and have not large teeth, their growth not being in proportion to their detrition."
• "The site or lie of the city is principally in two hollow basins, in which the detrition of houses forms now a soil for grain, for fruit gardens and good tobacco."
• "Neither have I indulged in any flights of the imagination in depicting the horrible, but rather subdued the poignancy of the original; particularly in the case of the murder, which in my hands has received considerable detrition."