erase and raze related — through Latin radere “to scrape”. This exchange from the opening of Measure for Measure suggested looking it up:
LUCIO
Thou concludest like the sanctimonious pirate, that
went to sea with the Ten Commandments, but scraped
one out of the table.
Second Gentleman
‘Thou shalt not steal’?
LUCIO
Ay, that he razed.
Kind of a weird question that the passage also suggests — did Shakespeare know the Latin word radere and it’s meaning, “to scrape”? Why would he have use that word ‘scrape’if he doesn’t know how it relates to that word ‘raze’?
.i`` * ^ / . . . . . ` `~ 