Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Deserted; forsaken.
  • adjective Exuberantly enthusiastic.
  • adjective Recklessly unrestrained.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Deserted; utterly forsaken; left to destruction: as, an abandoned ship.
  • Given up, as to vice, especially to the indulgence of vicious appetites or passions; shamelessly and recklessly wicked; profligate.
  • Synonyms Forsaken, deserted, given up, relinquished, discarded, rejected, destitute, forlorn.
  • Profligate, Abandoned, Reprobate, depraved, corrupt, vicious, wicked, unprincipled, hardened, dead to honor, incorrigible, irreclaimable. Profligate, abandoned, reprobate express extreme wickedness that has cast off moral restraint. Profligate is applied to one who throws away means and character in the pursuit of vice, and especially denotes depravity exhibited outwardly and conspicuously in conduct; hence it may be used to characterize political conduct: as, a profligate administration. Abandoned is applied to one who has given himself wholly up to the gratification of vicious propensities; it is stronger than profligate and weaker than reprobate. Reprobate is applied to one who has become insensible to reproof and is past hope; from its use in the Bible it has become the theological term for hopeless alienation from virtue or piety. (For comparison with depraved, etc., see criminal, a.)

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Forsaken, deserted.
  • adjective Self-abandoned, or given up to vice; extremely wicked, or sinning without restraint; irreclaimably wicked .

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Simple past tense and past participle of abandon.
  • adjective geology No longer being acted upon by the geologic forces that formed it.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective free from constraint
  • adjective forsaken by owner or inhabitants

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Past tense of the verb to abandon.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From abandon, from French abandonné ("immoral") past participle of abandonner

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word abandoned.

Examples

  • She explained the word abandoned had been removed from the announcement.

    OVERBOARD ! MICHAEL J. TOUGIAS 2010

  • She explained the word abandoned had been removed from the announcement.

    OVERBOARD ! MICHAEL J. TOUGIAS 2010

  • We have what we call the abandoned swimming pools.

    In Kenya, a Community Fights Against Malaria 2011

  • And so what happens to this group that I call the abandoned, is that they get shoved around and increasingly out into the inner suburbs and end up almost out of sight, out of mind.

    'Disintegration' Of America's Black Neighborhoods 2010

  • And so what happens to this group that I call the abandoned, is that they get shoved around and increasingly out into the inner suburbs and end up almost out of sight, out of mind.

    'Disintegration' Of America's Black Neighborhoods 2010

  • We have what we call the abandoned swimming pools.

    In Kenya, a Community Fights Against Malaria 2011

  • And so what happens to this group that I call the abandoned, is that they get shoved around and increasingly out into the inner suburbs and end up almost out of sight, out of mind.

    'Disintegration' Of America's Black Neighborhoods 2010

  • As an atheist, I cannot speak to what he describes as his abandoned wife's ultimate destination, but I can tell how Wesley Smith consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture—whom I often consult on these bitterly controversial cases because of his carefully researched books and articles—describes death by dehydration.

    Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog: 2005

  • As an atheist, I cannot speak to what he describes as his abandoned wife's ultimate destination, but I can tell how Wesley Smith consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture—whom I often consult on these bitterly controversial cases because of his carefully researched books and articles—describes death by dehydration.

    Irish Elk, blogs and Nat Henthoff 2005

  • Neither was he totally hard and callous to impressions of religion, what we call abandoned; for he absolutely denied to curse

    Human Nature and Other Sermons Joseph Butler 1722

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.