attrition vs erosion

attrition

noun
  • The loss of participants during an experiment. 

  • A gradual, natural reduction in membership or personnel, as through retirement, resignation, or death. 

  • Grinding down or wearing away by friction. 

  • Imperfect contrition or remorse. 

  • The gradual reduction in a tangible or intangible resource due to causes that are passive and do not involve productive use of the resource. 

  • The wearing of teeth due to their grinding. 

  • The loss of a first or second language or a portion of that language. 

verb
  • To reduce the number of (jobs or workers) by not hiring new employees to fill positions that become vacant (often with out). 

  • To undergo a reduction in number. 

  • To grind or wear down through friction. 

erosion

noun
  • The gradual loss of something as a result of an ongoing process. 

  • A shallow ulceration or lesion, usually involving skin or epithelial tissue. 

  • One of two fundamental operations in morphological image processing from which all other morphological operations are derived. 

  • The result of having been worn away or eroded, as by a glacier on rock or the sea on a cliff face. 

  • The changing of a surface by mechanical action, friction, thermal expansion contraction, or impact. 

  • Loss of tooth enamel due to non-bacteriogenic chemical processes. 

  • Destruction by abrasive action of fluids. 

  • In morphology, a basic operation (denoted ⊖); see Erosion (morphology). 

How often have the words attrition and erosion occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )