attrition

  1. Noun.  wearing or grinding down by friction.
  2. Noun.  the gradual reduction in a tangible or intangible resource due to causes that are passive and do not involve productive use of the resource.
  3. Noun.  (human resources) A gradual, natural reduction in membership or personnel, as through retirement, resignation, or death.
  4. Noun.  (sciences) The loss of participants during an experiment.
  5. Noun.  (theology) Imperfect contrition or remorse.

This is an unmodified, but possibly outdated, definition from Wiktionary and used here under the Creative Commons license. Wiktionary is a great resource. If you like it too, please donate to Wikimedia.

This entry was last updated on RefTopia from its source on 3/20/2012.