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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Abdication

Abdication \Ab`di*ca"tion\, n. [L. abdicatio: cf. F. abdication.] The act of abdicating; the renunciation of a high office, dignity, or trust, by its holder; commonly the voluntary renunciation of sovereign power; as, abdication of the throne, government, power, authority.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
abdication

1550s, "a disowning," from Latin abdicationem (nominative abdicatio) "renunciation, abdication," noun of action from past participle stem of abdicare (see abdicate); sense of "resignation of sovereignty" is from 1680s.

Wiktionary
abdication

n. 1 (context obsolete English) The act of disowning or disinheriting a child. (Attested from the mid 16th century until the mid 17th century.)(R:SOED5: page=3) 2 The act of abdicating; the renunciation of a high office, dignity, or trust, by its holder. (First attested in the early 17th century.) 3 The voluntary renunciation of sovereign power; as, '''abdication''' of the throne, government, power, authority. (First attested in the late 17th century.) 4 (context obsolete legal English) The renunciation of interest in a property or a legal claim; abandonment. (Attested only in the mid 18th century.) 5 (context obsolete English) The action of being deposed from the seat of power. (Attested only in the mid 17th century.)

WordNet
abdication
  1. n: a formal resignation and renunciation of powers [syn: stepping down]

  2. the act of abdicating [syn: stepping down]

Wikipedia
Abdication

Abdication is the act of formally relinquishing monarchical authority.

Usage examples of "abdication".

Her immovably placid features, her mournful look, betokened the renunciation of the flesh, and the abdication of all independence of thought.

As that abdication left Holland for twelve years under a regency, that is to say, under the direct influence of the Emperor, according to the terms of the constitution, there was no need of that union for executing every measure he might have in view against trade and against England, since his will was supreme in Holland.

With the character we have already seen in Nais, it may be said that no one was better fitted than she for the duties that devolved upon her by the abdication of her mother.

But he yielded, however reluctantly, to the ascendant which his wiser colleague had acquired over him, and retired, immediately after his abdication, to a villa in Lucania, where it was almost impossible that such an impatient spirit could find any lasting tranquility.

One facet of their ploy was to claim that all Kings since the Abdication of Chivalry were pretenders, that the bastardy of FitzChivalry Farseer was wrongly construed as an obstacle to his inheriting the throne.

His follies and reverses in Hanover were without doubt the cause of his abdication.

Wigg lifted one of two beautiful golden amphorae that were sitting on the altar next to the Chalice of the Abdication Ceremony.

East Third Avenue in Kyoto stood the Cloister Palace, to which the emperors retired upon abdication.

One facet of their ploy was to claim that all Kings since the Abdication of Chivalry were pretenders, that the bastardy of FitzChivalry Farseer was wrongly construed as an obstacle to his inheriting the throne.

But the thought of the six wizards of the Directorate seeing him hanging over a cliff so close to the abdication ceremony started him laughing all over again.

If it were possible to rely on the partial testimony of an injudicious writer, we might ascribe the abdication of Diocletian to the menaces of Galerius, and relate the particulars of a private conversation between the two princes, in which the former discovered as much pusillanimity as the latter displayed ingratitude and arrogance.

By this shameful abdication, he protracted his life about five years, in a very ambiguous state, between an emperor and an exile, till he was assassinated at Salona by the ungrateful Glycerius, who was translated, perhaps as the reward of his crime, to the archbishopric of Milan.

Both are concepts pertaining to intellectual bankruptcy: the first stands for the abdication of reason—the second, for that state of hysterical panic which brandishes a fist as its sole recourse.

Perhaps the apprehensions our ancestors entertained of forming such a precedent as that "of cashiering for misconduct" was the cause that the declaration of the act, which implied the abdication of King James, was, if it had any fault, rather too guarded and too circumstantial.

He then commended her to the keeping of her father, whom he also welcomed back to Great Mall, saying that the chancellory might well require his good offices in the terms ahead, in view of Lucius Rexford's abdication of responsibility.