abandon

Forms

1.To give up or relinquish control of, to surrender or to give oneself over, or to yield to one's emotions.
2.To desist in doing, practicing, following, holding, or adhering to; to turn away from; to permit to lapse; to renounce; to discontinue.
3.To leave behind; to desert, as in a ship, a position, or a person, typically in response to overwhelming odds or impending dangers; to forsake, in spite of a duty or responsibility.
- She abandoned her husband for a new man.
- Hope was overthrown, and yet could not be abandoned.
- He was abandoned on the island with no one to help him.
4.To no longer exercise a right, title, or interest, especially with no interest of reclaiming it again; to yield; to relinquish.
- I hereby abandon my position as manager.

1.A yielding to natural impulses or inhibitions; freedom from artificial constraint, with loss of appreciation of consequences. (Now especially in the phrase with abandon.)
- I envy those chroniclers who assert with reckless but sincere abandon: 'I was there. I saw it happen. It happened thus.'
- They needed to have an abandon in their performance that you just can’t get out of people in the middle of the night when they’re barefoot.
- My dreams were largely based on the works of Dickens (his Mugby Junction stories), Thackeray (Jeames on the Gauge Question), and Arthur Conan Doyle, whose Sherlock Holmes stories I kept devouring with gluttonous abandon.

Uncommon· #2495

Etymology tree

Proto-Indo-European *h₂éd

Proto-Italic *ad

Latin ad

Old French a

Proto-Germanic *bannanąder.

Frankish *bannder.

Old French ban

Proto-Indo-European *déh₃nom

Proto-Italic *dōnom

Proto-Indo-European *-h₂

Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂

Proto-Indo-European *-yéti