RELIC • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Relic

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/rˈɛlɪk/ Listen

noun

Relic n. (Formerly written also relique)

That which remains; that which is left after loss or decay; a remaining portion; a remnant. "The relics of lost innocence." "The fragments, scraps, the bits and greasy relics."

The body from which the soul has departed; a corpse; especially, the body, or some part of the body, of a deceased saint or martyr; usually in the plural when referring to the whole body. "There are very few treasuries of relics in Italy that have not a tooth or a bone of this saint." "Thy relics, Rowe, to this fair urn we trust, And sacred place by Dryden's awful dust."

Hence, a memorial; anything preserved in remembrance; as, relics of youthful days or friendships. "The pearls were spilt; Some lost, some stolen, some as relics kept."

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Etymology of 'Relic'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Relic" Quotes from Famous Books

... king was perhaps Kanishka himself, Fa-hien mixing up, in an inartistic way, different legends about him. Eitel suggests that a relic of the old name of the country may still exist in that of the Jats or Juts of the present day. A more common name for it is Tukhara, and he observes that the people were the Indo-Scythians of the Greeks, and the Tartars of Chinese writers, who, ...

— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien

... Carchemish, the Hittite stronghold which commanded the road across the Euphrates, was taken in B.C. 717, and the way lay open to the west. The barrier that had existed for seven centuries between the Semites of the east and west was removed, and the last relic of the Hittite conquests in Syria passed away. In the following year Sargon overran the territories of the Minni between Ararat and Lake Urumiyeh, and two years later the northern confederacy was utterly crushed. The fortress ...

— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce

... true that Berta put away Adrian Baker's letter carefully, treasuring it as one treasures a relic. It is true that she passed whole hours seated at her piano running her fingers up and down the keys, playing Adrian Baker's favorite airs, which he himself had taught her. But except this, Berta lived like ...

— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various

... consuls, in a time of heavy rains, a violent torrent washed away the earth, and dislodged the chests of stone; and, their covers falling off, one of them was found wholly empty, without the least relic of any human body; in the other were the books before mentioned, which the praetor Petilius having read and perused, made oath in the senate, that, in his opinion, it was not fit for their contents to be made public to the ...

— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... house, about fifteen years old, was already inclining to become a new Colonial relic. The Adamses had built it, moving into it from the "Queen Anne" house they had rented until they took this step in fashion. But fifteen years is a long time to stand still in the midland country, even for ...

— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington

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