Meaning of palimpsest | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A manuscript or document that has been erased or scraped clean, for reuse of the paper, parchment, vellum, or other medium on which it was written.
2. Monumental brasses that have been reused by engraving of the blank back side.
   archaic
3. Circular features believed to be lunar craters that have been obliterated by later volcanic activity.
4. Geological features thought to be related to features or effects below the surface.
5. Memory that has been erased and re-written.
6. The partial erasure of or superimposition on an older society or culture by a newer one.
7. Something bearing the traces of an earlier, erased form.
8. A text with several layers of meaning, especially pertaining to different points in time.

Equivalents

Examples

“But on her he did not see even the palimpsest of a smile.”

“Miraculously, the Stasi's record of Garton Ash's years in Berlin remained intact, and in his extraordinary book The File he recalls going back to Berlin, sifting through the material, and piecing together those years for himself. The result is a palimpsest of memories, observations recorded by informants and agents, and the recollections in his own diaries at that time.”

“... with the multilingual portmanteau words and phrases giving the text the quality of a palimpsest upon which multiple layers of textual meaning can be simultaneously detected.”

CEFR level