Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- transitive verb To give up (something formerly held dear); renounce.
- transitive verb To leave altogether; abandon.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To give up; renounce; reject.
- To refuse (a request); deny (a statement).
- To quit or leave entirely; desert; abandon; depart or withdraw from: as, friends and flatterers forsake us in adversity; fortune forsook him.
- Synonyms Forsake, Desert, Abandon, Relinquish, Quit. These all express the idea of giving up or leaving. The first three are strong expressions, ordinarily conveying the idea of loss to that which is left; the fourth, on the other hand, suggests loss to him who relinquishes. Forsake is chiefly applied to leaving that by which natural affection or a sense of duty should or might have led us to remain: as, to
forsake one's home, friends, country, or cause; a bird forsakes its nest. In the passive it often means left desolate, forlorn. Forsake may be used in a good sense: as, the color forsook her cheeks; even hope forsook him. Desert may be synonymous with forsake, but in the active voice it usually implies a greater degree of culpability, and often the infringement of a legal obligation: as, todesert one's family, regiment, ship, colors, post. Such was the original use of the word. Abandon most fully expresses complete and final severance of connection: as, toabandon a ship or a hopeless undertaking; to abandon hope or property. Sometimes, but not so often as desert or forsake, it implies the dropping of all care or concern for an object: as, toabandon one's offspring Relinquish is not used with a personal object: as, torelinquish a claim, land, effort. (See lists under relinquish and abandon.) To quit is to leave finally or hastily, or both.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To quit or leave entirely; to desert; to abandon; to depart or withdraw from; to leave.
- transitive verb To renounce; to reject; to refuse.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb To
abandon , to give up, toleave (permanently ), torenounce .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb leave someone who needs or counts on you; leave in the lurch
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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But if ye fain forsake, I’ll requite till quits we cry!
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And if ye fain forsake, I’ll requite till quits we cry!
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But if ye fain forsake, I’ll requite till quits we cry!
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That of Jonah ii. 8 is concerning such as forsake the true
The Death of Death in the Death of Christ 1616-1683 1967
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That they may 'forsake' all their own power to cope with them.
Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke Alexander Maclaren 1868
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'I have gone to the Greek for it; and there the word rendered "forsake" is one that means to "take leave of" -- "bid farewell."
A Red Wallflower Susan Warner 1852
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The word rendered "forsake" actually means to abandon or, in this case, to set aside.
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The word rendered "forsake" actually means to abandon or, in this case, to set aside.
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(literally, 'forsake') My fields (the whole land around being peculiarly Jehovah's)?
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To solve the lack of order they saw all around them, the fathers seized on one of the great—and often missed—ironies in world history: the only thing that could make men forsake their own freedom and still believe they were free was self-rule.
A Renegade History of the United States Thaddeus Russell 2010
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