deletio

Deletio is a Latin noun meaning the act of deleting, erasing, or expunction. It derives from the verb delere "to erase" and the suffix -tio forming a noun of action. In classical Latin the noun is relatively scarce, but it is used in later Latin and in scholarly Latin to discuss acts of removal within texts or records.

In textual criticism and manuscript studies, deletio denotes the deliberate erasure or suppression of writing by a scribe. It may reflect an error correction, a change of mind, or censorship, and is often investigated through paleographic evidence such as erasures, overwriting, or fresh marginal notes. When editors describe textual changes, deletio is contrasted with interpolatio (addition) and with corrections introduced by scribes.

In modern scholarly Latin, deletio can appear in discussions of editing practice, both in manuscript contexts and in Latin-language treatments of editing or archiving. In legal or ecclesiastical Latin, more specialized terms such as expunctio are commonly used for expunction, while deletio may be employed where the author explicitly adopts the ordinary sense of deletion.

See also: deletion, expunction, redaction, interpolation.