English

Adjective

derelict ‎(comparative more derelict, superlative most derelict)

1. Abandoned, forsaken; given up by the natural owner or guardian; (of a ship) abandoned at sea, dilapidated, neglected; (of a spacecraft) abandoned in outer space.

   There was a derelict ship on the island.

   • Jeremy Taylor

     The affections which these exposed or derelict children bear to their mothers, have no grounds of nature or assiduity but civility and opinion.

   • 2011, “When and where did NASA's derelict satellite go down?”, in (Please provide the title of the work):
2. Negligent in performing a duty.
3. Lost; adrift; hence, wanting; careless; neglectful; unfaithful.
   • Burke

     They easily prevailed, so as to seize upon the vacant, unoccupied, and derelict minds of his friends; and instantly they turned the vessel wholly out of the course of his policy.

   • John Buchanan

     A government which is either unable or unwilling to redress such wrongs is derelict to its highest duties.

Synonyms

• (abandoned): abandoned

Translations

Noun

derelict ‎(plural derelicts)

1. Property abandoned by its former owner, especially a ship abandoned at sea.
   • 1907, Robert W. Service, “The Cremation of Sam McGee”, in The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses:

     Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay; / It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the "Alice May". / And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum; / Then "Here", said I, with a sudden cry, "is my cre-ma-tor-eum."

2. (dated) An abandoned or forsaken person; an outcast.
   • 1911 Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax” (Norton 2005, p.1364):

     A rather pathetic figure, the Lady Frances, a beautiful woman, still in fresh middle age, and yet, by a strange chance, the last derelict of what only twenty years ago was a goodly fleet.

3. A homeless and/or jobless person; a person who is (perceived as) negligent in their personal affairs and hygiene. (This sense is a modern development of the preceding sense.)
   • 1988, Jonathan D. Spence, The Question of Hu:

     As they hunt, the Archers and Duval find many derelicts and ne'er-do-wells in many parts of Paris.

   • 2002, in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of D. H. Lawrence, The Boy in the Bush, edited by Paul Eggert, page 22:

     If they're lazy derelicts and ne'er-do-wells she'll eat 'em up. But she's waiting for real men — British to the bone —

   • 2004, Katherine V. W. Stone, From Widgets to Digits: Employment Regulation, page 280:

     We see the distinction at work when victims of natural disasters and terrorist attacks are treated more generously than derelicts and drug addicts.

Translations

See also

• flotsam
• jetsam
• lagan
• salvage