Raze to the ground To destroy and sweep completely away. The
expression 'raze to the ground', like 'bated breath' and 'just
deserts', is often spelled incorrectly. The sources of these
misunderstandings are the homophones 'bated' and 'baited',
'deserts' and 'desserts' and, in 'raze to the ground', 'raze'
and 'raise'. Added to that is the fact that the correct spelling
in each case is of an archaic word that is rarely used
elsewhere. As a child, I heard stories of WWII and of cities
like Dresden and Hiroshima being, as I thought, 'raised to the
ground'. That seemed odd to me. How could destroying them with
bombs raise them? Were these cities underground? It makes a
little more sense when we understand that 'raze' is the verb
that gave rise to the noun 'razor'. What's being said is akin to
'razored (i.e. shaved) to the ground'. It seems that others are
similarly confused - there are currently (Oct 2009) many hits in
Google for 'raise the the ground'. Raze is hardly a common word
now (in the UK at least - there