[a. Fr. abandonnement, f. abandonner to ABANDON: see -MENT.] The action or process of abandoning; the condition of being abandoned.
1. The action of relinquishing to another, of giving up, letting go, forsaking.
1611. Cotgr., Abandon The quitting, abandonment, or prostitution of a thing vnto others.
1788. Burke, Sp. agt. Hastings, Wks. XIII. 468. Mr. Hastings’s abandonment of all his own pretences.
1818. Byron, Ch. Harold, IV. cxxvii ’Tis a base Abandonment of reason to resign Our right of thought.
1856. Kane, Arctic Explor., II. xvii. 179. I regard the abandonment of the brig as inevitable.
2. Comm. Law. The relinquishment of an interest or claim; esp. in Marine Insurance.
1809. Tomlins, Law Dict., Insurance II. 7. Abandonment is as ancient as the Contract of Insurance itself.
1848. Arnould, Law of Mar. Ins. (1866), II. III. vi. 852. Abandonment therefore is the act of cession, by which … the assured, on condition of receiving at once the whole amount of the insurance, relinquishes to the underwriters all his property and interest in the thing insured.
3. Self-abandonment; the surrender of oneself to an influence, of one’s presence of mind, pretensions, etc.
1860. R. A. Vaughan, Ho. w. Mystics (ed. 2), I. 153. Then understood this Master that true Abandonment, with utter Abasement, was the nearest way to God.
1870. Emerson, Soc. & Solit., iv. 69. Where heats and panics and abandonments are quite out of the system.
4. The condition of being abandoned.
1839. De Quincey, Recoll. Lakes, Wks. 1862, II. 1. Fortitude which could face an occasion of sudden mysterious abandonment.
5. Freedom from restraint of manner, careless freedom, abandon.
1831. Carlyle, Sartor Res., 87 (1858). Gaily in light, graceful abandonment, the friendly talk played round that circle.
1842. Mrs. Browning, Grk. Chr. Poets, 158 (1863). The elasticity and abandonment of Shakespeare.
1844. Disraeli, Coningsby, III. i. 88. His manner was frank even to abandonment.
