wear down/erode

[WilliamTaft]

An example sentence of "wear down" in Longman Advanced American Dictionary (retired): Mountains are slowly worn down by wind and rain.

What's the difference if I say "are slowly eroded?"

 

[Tarheel]

I don't think there's any difference.

Isn't "erode" part of the definition of "wear down"?

 

[Skrej]

An example sentence of "wear down" in the Longman Advanced American Dictionary(retired): Mountains are slowly worn down by wind and rain.

What's the difference if I say "are slowly eroded?"

No practical difference, and both work equally well.

'Eroded' is the proper scientific term for the process, while 'worn down' is idiomatic (it's a phrasal verb, which are idiomatic by definition.) 'Wear down' perhaps emphasizes the idea of persistence or drudgery a bit more, and maybe even anthropomorphizes the agents (wind and rain) a bit.

All that being said, I don't think the distinction is one learners need to worry about or consider at initial levels of language acquisition. That's the kind of analysis you start worrying about in college literature classes, when you put every word choice an author makes under a microscope looking for some deeper subtext (that may not even exist....)

Perhaps think of it as 'wear down' being a bit more colloquial and 'eroded' being marginally more formal. Even then, it's not that much of a difference in register. I'm hard pressed to think of a situation where it would make any difference which term you chose.

 

[SoothingDave]

Seems like one of those Anglo Saxon vs Norman French distinctions.