The carvings on the cabin have lost lustre (faded) long before , the slates on the road have been outworn to their slipperiness by to-and-fros of generations. 木屋上的雕花早已泛旧,青石板也被几代人的脚磨得光滑。
Every historian — sometimes unconsciously, but always inevitably — must have put to himself the question: How long could such-or-such an outworn system last?
Wear is related to interactions between surfaces and specifically the removal and deformation of material on a surface as a result of mechanical action of the opposite surface.
In materials science, wear is erosion or sideways displacement of material from its "derivative" and original position on a solid surface performed by the action of another surface.