DERELICT • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Derelict

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/dˈɛrəlˌɪkt/ Listen

adjective

Derelict adj.

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."

Lost; adrift; hence, wanting; careless; neglectful; unfaithful. "They easily prevailed, so as to seize upon the vacant, unoccupied, and derelict minds of his (Chatham's) friends; and instantly they turned the vessel wholly out of the course of his policy." "A government which is either unable or unwilling to redress such wrongs is derelict to its highest duties."

noun

Derelict n. (Law)

(a)

A thing voluntary abandoned or willfully cast away by its proper owner, especially a ship abandoned at sea.

(b)

A tract of land left dry by the sea, and fit for cultivation or use.

See images of 'Derelict'

Etymology of 'Derelict'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Derelict" Quotes from Famous Books

... can; but none of us can be blind to the fact that he has lost more flesh during the week that we have lain here than any among us—none of us can be blind to the fact that the committee has been derelict in its duty, either through negligence or a graver fault, in thus offering for our suffrages a gentleman who, however pure his own motives may be, has really ...

— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... place of our grandmother's spinet and harpsichord, and every girl in every family was taught to play upon it after a fashion. She who had not taste or talent for music gave it up after her marriage. In this particular she was no more derelict than the "performer" of our times, whose florid flourish of classic music costs thousands where her grandmother's strumming ...

— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... now, Guy. A good old soul, my uncle, d'y' see; but the blood was everything to him. And he put it in the bond and I am bound by it: that only the lawful issue, a son of the house, shall inherit. 'I'll have no strange derelict child inherit my estate.' His own words. So this fair estate, lacking lawful issue of my body or my old uncle's son—and he is dead—it goes out of the family. Oh, a stormy, intolerant, but well-meaning old uncle, who would have none of his property left to—Oh, but ...

— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly

... in the boat three were without life. Those whose faint breathing indicated that they had not yet reached the point of death were too weak and indifferent to rid the boat of the bodies of the others. Ever since the homeward-bound whaler had struck a derelict in a gale of wind north of the Falklands and foundered, this little boat, surviving the shipwreck as by a miracle, ...

— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... destined to be left a derelict at home, as falls to the hapless lot of far too many good ...

— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

More quotes...