the.com/deletion

means The act of removing something—text, data, a file—so it no longer appears, even if traces linger beneath the surface.

from From Latin deletio, from delere ('to destroy, blot out, wipe away'), itself possibly built from de- ('away, undoing') plus linere ('to smear, wipe with a coating'), the same root that gives us 'linoleum' and 'liniment'. So the oldest sense of deletion isn't vanishing at all — it's smearing something out, the way you'd blur wax over a wax tablet to erase a word, leaving the surface changed but never truly blank.