Search the Dictionary

The abandoned and decaying remains of some bulky and once comely thing, as a ship; the skeleton, or the uncovered or unfinished frame, of a thing. A rotten carcass of a boat. Shak.

to shout."Your gesture cries it out." Shak. -- To cry quits, to propose, or declare, the abandonment of a contest. -- To cry up, to enhance the value or reputation of by public and noisy praise; to extol; to laud publicly or urgently.

Act of abandoning a person or cause to which one is bound by allegiance or duty, or to which one has attached himself; desertion; failure in duty; a falling away; apostasy; backsliding. "Defection and falling away from God." Sir W. Raleigh. The general defection of the whole realm. Sir J. Davies.

To forsake; to abandon; to desist or deviate (from); not to adhere to; -- with from; as, we can not depart from our rules; to depart from a title or defense in legal pleading. If the plan of the convention be found to depart from republican principles. Madison.

Deviation or abandonment, as from or of a rule or course of action, a plan, or a purpose. Any departure from a national standard. Prescott.

Given up or forsaken by the natural owner or guardian; left and abandoned; as, derelict lands. The affections which these exposed or derelict children bear to their mothers, have no grounds of nature or assiduity but civility and opinion. Jer. Taylor.

The act of leaving with an intention not to reclaim or resume; an utter forsaking abandonment. Cession or dereliction, actual or tacit, of other powers. Burke.

ve (especially something which one should stay by and support); to leave in the lurch; to abandon; to forsake; -- implying blame, except sometimes when used of localities; as, to desert a friend, a principle, a cause, one's country. "The deserted fortress." Prescott.

arty, a friend, or any one to whom he owes service; especially, a soldier or a seaman who abandons the service without leave; one guilty of desertion.

The act of deserting or forsaking; abandonment of a service, a cause, a party, a friend, or any post of duty; the quitting of one's duties willfully and without right; esp., an absconding from military or naval service. Such a resignation would have seemed to his superior a desertion or a reproach. Bancroft.…

A state of despair, or utter hopeless; abandonment of hope; extreme recklessness; reckless fury. In the desperation of the moment, the officers even tried to cut their way through with their swords. W. Irving.

To leave destitute; to forsake; to abandon. [Obs.] To forsake or destitute a plantation. Bacon.

I was brought here under the disadvantage of being unknown by sight to any of you. Burke. Abandoned by their great patron, the faction henceforward acted at disadvantage. Palfrey.

Loosed from restraint; esp., loose in morals and conduct; recklessly abandoned to sensual pleasures; profligate; wanton; lewd; debauched. "A wild and dissolute soldier." Motley.

To harass or reduce to subjection by dragoons; to persecute by abandoning a place to the rage of soldiers.

erly employed medicinally, but was found so violent in its effects that its use is nearly abandoned.

To forsake; to abandon; as, his customers fell off. (f) To depreciate; to change for the worse; to deteriorate; to become less valuable, abundant, or interesting; as, a falling off in the wheat crop; the magazine or the review falls off. "O Hamlet, what a falling off was there!" Shak. (g) (Naut.) To deviate or trend to…

h manner; as, to fling out hard words against another. -- To fling up, to relinquish; to abandon; as, to fling up a design.

To give up; to leave; to abandon. [Obs.] "To forlet sin." Chaucer.

Deserted abandoned; lost. Of fortune and of hope at once forlorn. Spenser. Some say that ravens foster forlorn children. Shak.