Wiped

Wiped is the past tense and past participle of the verb wipe. It is used to describe cleaning a surface, removing marks or dirt, and erasing or removing information. In everyday language, someone might say they wiped a desk clean or wiped a slate of notes before a meeting. The term is also used idiomatically to describe thorough defeat or destruction, as in wiping out a target or competition, or wiping a town from the map in a disaster.

Data wiping refers to the process of securely erasing data from storage media so that it cannot be recovered. This is typically accomplished by overwriting the storage sectors with new data, sometimes in multiple passes. Standards and guidelines describe acceptable techniques, including legacy DoD methods and modern procedures such as NIST SP 800-88 for media sanitization. Depending on the media type and sensitivity of the data, additional steps like degaussing or physical destruction may be used to ensure unrecoverability.

Etymology and usage: the verb wipe derives from English with roots in the Germanic language family, with early forms such as Old English wīpan or wipian. The word has long linked meanings related to cleaning, erasing, and clearing information, and it appears in a variety of figurative phrases, such as “wipe the slate clean” or “wipe out” to denote removal or extinction.

See also: wipe (disambiguation), data sanitization, erasure, destruction.