palimpsest

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“
An obliterated manuscript written over again is called a palimpsest, and the man who can restore and read it a paleographist.

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Definitions (6)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. noun A manuscript, typically of papyrus or parchment, that has been written on more than once, with the earlier writing incompletely erased and often legible.
  2. noun An object, place, or area that reflects its history: "Spaniards in the sixteenth century . . . saw an ocean moving south . . . through a palimpsest of bayous and distributary streams in forested paludal basins” (John McPhee).

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Examples (50)

  • Adjusting the scan beam, the physicists fixed the scrap taken from the mold and finally acquired a kind of palimpsest: a scramble of letters and small circles, possibly from an official document seal. —  FIASCO - Stanislaw Lem
  • The erasure of older borders doesn't mean they totally disappear - the new map is a palimpsest, even if it sometimes has to be held up to the UV light of an election for those old, overwritten boundaries to reappear. —  WordPress.com Top Blogs
  • Yan's paintings are alchemical double exposures: we are asked to view them simultaneously as palimpsest-like records of their material creation and as indexes of their subjects. —  San Francisco Bay Guardian: Top Stories
  • It is, instead, about the processes that make him, the representations that persist like a palimpsest in —  PopMatters
  • So she arose, and passed Along the dark, deserted street, and I Followed her closely, till I saw her cross The threshold of her cottage; then I turned, And found my home, and calmly slept till dawn VIII THE PALIMPSEST In Milan, in the Ambrosian library there, Among Pinellian writings seared with age, I found a prophet's palimpsest--a scroll That Angelo Maio had brought to light. —  Stories in Verse
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Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Latin palimpsēstum, from Greek palimpsēston, neuter of palimpsēstos, scraped again : palin, again; see kwel-1 in Indo-European roots + psēn, to scrape.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. = French palimpseste = Spanish Portuguese palimpsesto = Italian palinsesto, from Latin palimpsestus, masculine, from Greek παλίμψηστον, a palimpsest, neuter of παλίμψηστος, scratched or scraped again, from πάλιν, back (to the former condition), + ψνστός, verbal adjective of ψάειν, ψῆν, rub, rub smooth.
 

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/ˈpælɪmpsɛst/
by American Heritage

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