ablative.

1. Protecting a surface by losing material through melting, vaporization, or erosion under intense heating.

2. Relating to an ablative grammatical case, associated with functions such as source, separation, or means in relevant languages.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• ablative heat shield
• ablative coating

On the page

The ablative shield charred during reentry.

Ablative material carried heat away as it wore down.

Usage notes

Primary category: sci-fi. Forms: Normally non-gradable as a protective mechanism. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings.