"Tower of fire RAZES complex"

       For as long as I can remember, the occasional meet-up with the fourth word in that headline I saw yesterday has set me off-kilter.

       You hear the word "raises," and yet you know it means "lowers" or "levels" or "destroys"--just the opposite kind of import from rising, ascending, building.

       "Raze" or "rase" began by meaning "scratch" with some of the notion of scraping away surface material, and that meaning is now archaic (though "erase" is still with us), and "raze" now extends the "scratch" to the demolishing of large quantities of material (often by fire).    A  common use of the word is "razed to the ground."

                                                                                                                   lift.
       It still makes my chin tilt a little.  I want to give that word a