Crossword clues for abdicate
abdicate
- Relinquish the throne
- Step down, in a way
- Renounce (a throne)
- Emulate Edward VIII
- Give up power and become less intense, keeping daughter in charge
- Stand down and ease off when detectives come back inside
- Sailor to expire whilst receiving whip, or give up
- Sailor one caught in engagement to surrender
- Renounce a throne
- Abandon royal dignity
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Abdicate \Ab"di*cate\, v. i. To relinquish or renounce a throne, or other high office or dignity.
Though a king may abdicate for his own person, he
cannot abdicate for the monarchy.
--Burke.
Abdicate \Ab"di*cate\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Abdicated; p. pr. & vb. n. Abdicating.] [L. abdicatus, p. p. of abdicare; ab + dicare to proclaim, akin to dicere to say. See Diction.]
-
To surrender or relinquish, as sovereign power; to withdraw definitely from filling or exercising, as a high office, station, dignity; as, to abdicate the throne, the crown, the papacy.
Note: The word abdicate was held to mean, in the case of James II., to abandon without a formal surrender.
The cross-bearers abdicated their service.
--Gibbon. -
To renounce; to relinquish; -- said of authority, a trust, duty, right, etc.
He abdicates all right to be his own governor.
--Burke.The understanding abdicates its functions.
--Froude. To reject; to cast off. [Obs.]
--Bp. Hall.-
(Civil Law) To disclaim and expel from the family, as a father his child; to disown; to disinherit.
Syn: To give up; quit; vacate; relinquish; forsake; abandon; resign; renounce; desert.
Usage: To Abdicate, Resign. Abdicate commonly expresses the act of a monarch in voluntary and formally yielding up sovereign authority; as, to abdicate the government. Resign is applied to the act of any person, high or low, who gives back an office or trust into the hands of him who conferred it. Thus, a minister resigns, a military officer resigns, a clerk resigns. The expression, ``The king resigned his crown,'' sometimes occurs in our later literature, implying that he held it from his people. -- There are other senses of resign which are not here brought into view.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1540s, "to disown, disinherit (children)," from Latin abdicatus, past participle of abdicare "to disown, disavow, reject" (specifically abdicare magistratu "renounce office"), from ab- "away" (see ab-) + dicare "proclaim," from stem of dicere "to speak, to say" (see diction). Meaning "divest oneself of office" first recorded 1610s. Related: Abdicated; abdicating.
Wiktionary
vb. 1 (context transitive obsolete English) To disclaim and expel from the family, as a father his child; to disown; to disinherit. (Attested from the mid 16th century until the early 19th century.) 2 (context transitive reflexive obsolete English) To formally separate oneself from or to divest oneself of. (First attested from the mid 16th century until the late 17th century.) 3 (context transitive obsolete English) To depose. (Attested from the early 17th century until the late 18th century.) 4 (context transitive obsolete English) To reject; to cast off; to discard. (Attested from the mid 16th century until the late 17th century.) 5 (context transitive English) To surrender, renounce or relinquish, as sovereign power; to withdraw definitely from filling or exercising, as a high office, station, dignity; as, to ''abdicate'' the throne, the crown, the papacy; to fail to fulfill responsibility for. (First attested in the mid 17th century.) 6 (context intransitive English) To relinquish or renounce a throne, or other high office or dignity; to renounce sovereignty. (First attested in the early 18th century.)
WordNet
v : give up, such as power, as of monarchs and emperors, or duties and obligations; "The King abdicated when he married a divorcee" [syn: renounce]
Usage examples of "abdicate".
He was one of those present when the King abdicated in favor of his son, along with Addis and myself and members of every degree, from bishops to serfs.
If, as has chanced to others--as chanced, for example, to Mangan-- outcast from home, health and hope, with a charred past and a bleared future, an anchorite without detachment and self-cloistered without self-sufficingness, deposed from a world which he had not abdicated, pierced with thorns which formed no crown, a poet hopeless of the bays and a martyr hopeless of the palm, a land cursed against the dews of love, an exile banned and proscribed even from the innocent arms of childhood--he were burning helpless at the stake of his unquenchable heart, then he might have been inconsolable, then might he have cast the gorge at life, then have cowered in the darkening chamber of his being, tapestried with mouldering hopes, and hearkened to the winds that swept across the illimitable wastes of death.
I think that King Poniatowski ought to have abdicated the name of Augustus, which he had taken at the time of his accession to the throne, when he abdicated royalty.
When Maximian had reluctantly abdicated the empire, the venal orators of the times applauded his philosophic moderation.
But it is my balsamic advice, that rather than promulgate this matter, the two malcontents should abdicate, and that a precept should be placarded at this sederunt as if they were not here, but had resigned and evaded their places, precursive to the meeting.
I have heard him called inconstant of purpose--when he deserted, for the sake of love, the hope of sovereignty, and when he abdicated the protectorship of England, men blamed his infirmity of purpose.
I am going to talk to this Baraka and give him a chance to abdicate before I do anything else.
When she learned that the baron was about to bring home a mistress, she had been moved to great emotion, believing that she must yield the sceptre of the household and abdicate in favor of the Baronne du Guenic, whose subject she was now compelled to be.
He heard the sounds of his mouth recovering fluidity, heard his name but could not repeat it now, no more than the king who abdicates repeats the name he took when he assumed the crown.
It is easy to understand the resistance the Government offers to the doctrine that a State may commit suicide, or by its own act abdicate its rights and cease to be a State in the Union.
I think that King Poniatowski ought to have abdicated the name of Augustus, which he had taken at the time of his accession to the throne, when he abdicated royalty.
The last mention of Sigismund by Smith is after his escape from captivity in Tartaria, when this mirror of virtues had abdicated.
What is our insomnia but the mad obstinacy of our mind in manufacturing thoughts and trains of reasoning, syllogisms and definitions of its own, refusing to abdicate in favor of that divine stupidity of closed eyes, or the wise folly of dreams?
His first job, he said, would be to go to Buckingham Palace and order the Queen to abdicate.
He abdicated at Fontainebleau in 1814, and was sent to the Island of Elba.