Word + Quiz: abrade

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Word + Quiz: abrade

1. rub hard or scrub

2. wear away

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The word abrade has appeared in four articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on April 25 in “An Amputee’s Toughest Challenge Yet: Her 140-Mile Run in the Desert” by Jeré Longman:

On the bottom of her running blade in the Sahara, Palmiero-Winters wore a scrap of Goodyear tire, three and a half inches wide, for traction. The prosthesis included an air chamber to cool its outer and inner layers. Then the leg was coated in a chalky color with paint used on the roofs of houses and buildings in the desert.

It was critical to keep sand from getting between Palmiero-Winters’s skin and the silicon liner of her prosthesis, said Schaffer, who fashioned the prosthetic leg. The rubbing would mercilessly abrade her skin, he said, not unlike trying to run a marathon in a bathing suit full of sand.

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