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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.

e (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.

rty, 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.

om the main body on special service. Troops . . . widely scattered in little detachments. Bancroft.

who, or that which, detects; a detecter. Shak. A deathbed's detector of the heart. Young. Bank-note detector, a publication containing a description of genuine and counterfeit bank notes, designed to enable persons to discriminate between them. -- Detector l. See under Lock.

A second marriage, after the death of the first husband of wife; -- in distinction from bigamy, as defined in the old canon law. See Bigamy. Goldsmith.

ng. Knights-errant used to distinguish themselves by devices on their shields. Addison. A banner with this strange device -Excelsior. Longfellow.

. To devise curious works. Ex. CCTV. 32. Devising schemes to realize his ambitious views. Bancroft.

Originally, an ornamental head band or fillet, worn by Eastern monarchs as a badge of royalty; hence (later), also, a crown, in general. "The regal diadem." Milton.

; a disagreement; an objection; a cavil. Measures for terminating all local difficulties. Bancroft.

by the edges of opaque bodies or through narrow slits, causing the appearance of parallel bands or fringes of prismatic colors, as by the action of a grating of fine lines or bars. Remarked by Grimaldi (1665), and referred by him to a property of light which he called diffraction. Whewell. Diffraction grating. (Optics)…

ning to a second marriage, that is, one after the death of the first wife or the first husband.

he dried leaves of the purple foxglove (Digitalis purpurea), used in heart disease, disturbance of the circulation, etc.

A bank; a dike. [Obs.] Sir W. Temple.

An embankment to prevent inundations; a levee. Dikes that the hands of the farmers had raised . . . Shut out the turbulent tides. Longfellow.

rsons appointed to manage the affairs of a company or corporation; as, the directors of a bank, insurance company, or railroad company. What made directors cheat in South-Sea year Pope.