Ab'di-cāte1, v. t.
[imp. & p. p. ABDICATED; p. pr. & vb. n. ABDICATING.] [Lat. abdīcare; ab and di-cere, intens. of dicere, to say; Fr. abdiquer, Pr. ab-dicar.]
Sense 1. To give up right or claim to; to forfeit by voluntary act; to withdraw definitively from filling or exercising, as an office or trust; to surrender formally, as a crown; to renounce; to relinquish.
He abdicates all right to be his own governor. Burke.
Sense 2. To abandon, as an office or trust, before the term of service has expired, without a formal resignation to those who conferred it, or without their consent; also, to abandon, as a throne, without a formal surrender of the crown. Blackstone.
Sense 3. (Civ. Law.) To disclaim and expel from the family, as a father his child; to disinherit.
Synonyms—To give up; quit; vacate; relinquish; forsake; abandon; resign; renounce; desert.—To ABDICATE, RESIGN. Abdicate expresses the act of a monarch in yielding up sovereign authority; as, to abdicate the crown, to abdicate one's throne, to abdicate the government. King James II. of England was held to have abdicated (and not merely deserted) his post, when he fled from the country, and thus ceased to administer the government. Resign is applied to the act of any person, high or low, who gives back an office or trust into the hands of him who conferred it. Thus, a minister resigns, a military officer resigns, a clerk resigns. The expression, “The king resigned his crown,” sometimes occurs in our later literature, implying that he held it from his people.—There are other senses of resign which are not here brought into view.