derelict
Meanings
Plural: derelicts
Noun
- a person without a home, job, or property
- a ship abandoned on the high seas
- Property abandoned by its former guardian or owner; (countable) an item of such property.
- Property abandoned by its former guardian or owner; (countable) an item of such property.
- Property abandoned at sea with no hope of recovery and no expectation of being returned to its owner; (countable) an item of such property, especially a ship.
- An abandoned or forsaken person; an outcast, a waif.
- A homeless or jobless person; a vagrant; also, a person who is (perceived as) negligent in their hygiene and personal affairs.
- A person who is negligent in performing a duty.
Adjective Satellite
- worn and broken down by hard use
- forsaken by owner or inhabitants
- failing in what duty requires
- "derelict (or delinquent) in his duty"
- in deplorable condition
Adj
- Given up by the guardian or owner; abandoned, forsaken.
- Given up by the guardian or owner; abandoned, forsaken.
- Of a ship: abandoned at sea; of a spacecraft: abandoned in outer space.
- Of property: in a poor state due to abandonment or neglect; dilapidated, neglected.
- Adrift, lost.
- Negligent in performing a duty; careless.
Verb
- To abandon or forsake (someone or something).
- To neglect a duty.
Origin / Etymology
PIE word
*de
The adjective and verb are a learned borrowing from Latin dērelictus (“(completely) abandoned, deserted, forsaken; discarded”), the perfect passive participle of dērelinquō (“to abandon, desert, forsake; to discard”), from dē- (prefix meaning ‘away from; completely, thoroughly’) + relinquō (“to abandon, desert, forsake, leave (behind); to depart (from); to give up, relinquish”) (from Proto-Italic *wrelinkʷō, from *wre (“again”) (whence Latin rē- (prefix meaning ‘again’)) + *linkʷō (“to leave”) (whence linquō (“to forsake; depart from, leave, quit”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *leykʷ- (“to leave”))). Doublet of relict, relic, and relinquish.
The noun is derived from the adjective.
Synonyms
abandoned, abandoned ship, anchorless, beat, beat up, beaten up, bedraggled, broken-down, bum, careless, casual, clochard, creaky, crumbling, cursory, decrepit, delinquent, derelict, dero, deserted, desolate, dilapidated, discarded, down-and-out, down-and-outer, draggled, drifter, dropped, epithite, flea-bitten, floater, forlorn, forsaken, gadling, heedless, high and dry, hobo, irregardless, irrespective, Jack out of doors, knight of the road, landleaper, landloper, landlouper, left behind, neglected, neglectful, negligent, nomad, orphaned, paker, palliard, pike, piker, ramshackle, ranger, reckless, regardless, remiss, rogue, rolling stone, rough sleeper, ruinous, run-down, rundown, scatterling, seedy, shirker, skelder, skell, slapdash, slipshod, sloppy, slovenly, stroller, stumblebum, swaggie, swagman, tatterdemalion, timeworn, toerag, tramp, truant, tumble-down, tumbledown, unfaithful, vagabond, vagrant, waif, wanderer, woebegone, yagger
Scrabble Score: 11
derelict is a valid Scrabble (US) TWL wordderelict is a valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
derelict is a valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary