- a parchment or the like from which writing has been partially or completely erased to make room for another text.
- something that has a new layer, aspect, or appearance that builds on its past and allows us to see or perceive parts of this past: Most of what we actually see when we view any culture is a historical palimpsest, with traces of former times.Today's towering Romanesque-Gothic structure is a palimpsest, the result of numerous additions and reconstructions.Memory is a palimpsest that is continually being written over, but never perfectly so.
- a manuscript on which two or more successive texts have been written, each one being erased to make room for the next
- (of a text) written on a palimpsest
- (of a document) used as a palimpsest
