a. and sb. [f. CAST v. + AWAY.]
A. adj. Thrown away, cast off, rejected; reprobate; ‘useless, of no value’ (J.).
1542. Brinklow, Compl., xvi. 41. Masterles and castaway courtyers.
1580. Sidney, Arcadia (1622), 57. Certaine castaway vowes, how much he would doe for her sake.
1614. Raleigh, Hist. World I. ii. § 3. 24 (J.). We … forget altogether (or onley remember, at our cast-away leisure), the imprisoned immortall Soule.
1818. Scott, Hrt. Midl., xxxi. In I had minded … I had never been the cast-away creature that I am.
1876. Page, Adv. Text-bk. Geol., xx. 413. The implements are chiefly of stone, and associated with the castaway bones of the deer, bear, and wild-ox.
b. Cast adrift, stranded.
1769. Falconer, Dict. Marine (1789), Cast away, the state of a ship which is lost … on a lee-shore, bank, or shallow.
1885. R. L. & F. Stevenson, Dynamiter, 75. A young lady and a mass of baggage standing castaway at midnight on the streets of London.
B. sb. One who or that which is cast away or rejected; a reprobate.
1526. Tindale, 2 Cor. xiii. 5. Knowe ye not … how that Jesus Christ is in you excepte ye be castawayes [Cranmer cast a wayes, Coverd. cast awayes, Rhem. & 1611 reprobates].
1563. Homilies, II. Passion, II. (1859), 419. Plain reprobates and castaways, being perpetually damned to the everlasting pains of hell fire.
1594. Shaks., Rich. III., II. ii. 6. Why do you … call vs Orphans, Wretches, Castawayes.
1611. Bible, 1 Cor. ix. 27. But I keepe vnder my body, and bring it into subiection: lest that by any meanes when I haue preached to others, I my selfe should be a castaway.
1829. Southey, All for Love, ii. ‘Dost thou … For ever pledge thyself to me?’… ‘I do; so help me, Satan!’ said The wilful castaway.
1871. E. F. Burr, Ad Fidem, xi. 220. Castaways from God.
b. esp. One cast adrift at sea; a shipwrecked man. Also fig. (from both senses) One cast adrift upon the world, or by society, an outcast.
1799. Cowper (title), The Castaway.
1816. J. Wilson, City of Plague, I. iii. 92. A lone castaway upon the sea.
1835. Marryat, Jac. Faithf., xviii. Those who … leave it [youth] to drift about the world, have to answer for the cast-away.
1865. Swinburne, Felise, 80. [Such things] As the sea feeds on, wreck and stray and castaway.
1869. Lecky, Europ. Mor., II. i. 36. The moral wellbeing of the castaways of Society.
1870. Times, 27 Aug., 4/4. The visit of Her Majesty’s ship Blanche to the Auckland Islands in search of the castaways of the Motoaka.
