toggle menu
menu
vocabulary
1000+ books

abdicate
in a sentence
grouped by contextual meaning

show 10 more with this conextual meaning
  • In 1917, Nicholas II abdicated both for himself and on behalf of his son, ending the Russian monarchy and over 300 years of Romanov rule.
  • In 1949, two years after the creation of Pakistan, he abdicated in favor of his elder son, Miangul Abdul Haq Jehanzeb.   (source)
  • King Edward abdicated in that year; he chose love over ambition.   (source)
    abdicated = formally gave up power and title
  • "Abdicate!" replied Anna with a laugh. "Certainly not, Your Highness."   (source)
    abdicate = formally give up royal title and power
  • So I abdicated my title as Lord of Anielle to my brother and left the next day.   (source)
    abdicated = formally gave up
  • I would rather abdicate my post and grant you command of the Varden than allow such a thing to occur.   (source)
    abdicate = formally give up
  • On April 11, after further defeat on the battlefield, Napoleon abdicated his throne and went into exile on the island of Elba.   (source)
    abdicated = formally gave up
  • Abdicating his titles, he retired to a monastery where he surrounded himself with hundreds of clocks.   (source)
    abdicating = formally giving up
  • If elected, I shall abdicate.   (source)
    abdicate = formally give up power
  • "But, Sire," interrupted Drinian, "are you abdicating?"   (source)
    abdicating = formally giving up power
▲ show less (of above)
show 3 more with this conextual meaning
  • There was in this voluntary abdication of his freewill, in this fancy submitting itself to another fancy, which suspects it not, a mixture of fantastic independence and blind obedience, something indescribable, intermediate between slavery and liberty, which pleased Gringoire,—a spirit essentially compound, undecided, and complex, holding the extremities of all extremes, incessantly suspended between all human propensities, and neutralizing one by the other.   (source)
    abdication = giving up power
  • She had objected that such a measure would be an overreaction but had been unable to convince Jormundur; he had threatened to abdicate his post if she refused to adopt what he considered to be proper precautions.   (source)
    abdicate = formally give up
  • The king and queen who are at present occupying my throne are very old and tottering, and are going to abdicate shortly in my favor.   (source)
▲ show less (of above)
show 10 more with this conextual meaning
  • The mayor complained that the police had abdicated their responsibility to protect the public.
    abdicated = ignored
  • "I think the Pakistan government is basically abdicating to the Taliban and the extremists," said Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State.   (source)
    abdicating = surrendering duties and obligations
  • I felt she was in some way betraying me — that she was shirking her duties, that she'd abdicated.   (source)
    abdicated = ignored obligations
  • But I am still her father. What would you have me do? Abdicate my responsibilities?   (source)
    abdicate = ignore
  • Part of his brain told him that he knew perfectly well what he was looking at and what the shapes represented while another quite sensibly refused to countenance the idea and abdicated responsibility for any further thinking in that direction.   (source)
    abdicated = ignored
  • Given what unfolded over the hours that followed the ease with which I abdicated responsibility-my utter failure to consider that Andy might have been in serious trouble-was a lapse that's likely to haunt me for the rest of my life.   (source)
  • Don't abdicate your good sense.   (source)
    abdicate = ignore
  • They have abdicated and left him to Mrs. Greta Shaw, to nannies, to a tutor in the summer and The School (which is Private and Nice, and most of all, White) the rest of the time.   (source)
    abdicated = ignored responsibilities
  • At worst, his absence seemed an arrogant abdication of responsibility.   (source)
    abdication = disregard
  • The Lunar Authority cannot abdicate its sacred responsibility.   (source)
    abdicate = ignore
▲ show less (of above)
show 2 more with this conextual meaning
  • He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.   (source)
    abdicated = ignored duties (of)
  • When Massachusetts Federalists denounced John Quincy as no longer one of the party, Adams wrote to him to say he wished they would denounce him the same way, for he had long since "abdicated and disclaimed the name and character and attributes of that sect, as it now appears."   (source)
    abdicated = ignored duties or obligations
▲ show less (of above)
show 10 more examples with any meaning
  • I'll accept my lot. I'll sacrifice. I'll repent. I'll abdicate.†   (source)
  • He made a feeble attempt to assert what he thought should be his authority as the head of the household, but we both knew that he had abdicated the throne.†   (source)
  • He took the knotted throne five hundred years ago-when Dellanir abdicated in order to study the mysteries of magic-and held it until his death.†   (source)
  • A complete abdication, you know?†   (source)
  • There was no explosion, no anger-only the feebly uncertain voice of a man on the verge of abdication.†   (source)
  • I could not take her place, for she had not abdicated it.†   (source)
  • But I found myself instead struggling for breath, the simple draw of it, my still weakened lungs smarting with each gasp, and whatever life-spirit I possessed at that moment I felt desperate to abdicate, if but for empathy and the wish for a penance that would likely never come.†   (source)
  • Now he had been riding since early morning, when it was cold and the moon had refused to abdicate, hanging delicately over a pine-covered hill, as bashful as a doe, and as still.†   (source)
  • "The South today has abdicated any right to connection with the human race," Nathan harangued me.†   (source)
  • Do you mean that you abdicated?†   (source)
▲ show less (of above)
show 51 more examples with any meaning
  • Yet, in Florence's heart tonight hatred and bitterness weighed like granite, pride refused to abdicate from the throne it had held so long.†   (source)
  • "Parton has denounced you as No Federalist," his father wrote, "and I wish he would denounce me in the same manner, for I have long since renounced, abdicated, and disclaimed the name and character and attributes of that sect, as it now appears."†   (source)
  • If music was emotion and emotion came from thought, then this was the scream of chaos, of the irrational, of the helpless, of man's self-abdication.†   (source)
  • If he abdicates his power, he abdicates the status of man, and the grinding chaos of the irrational is what he achieves as his sphere of existence-by his own choice.†   (source)
  • She smiled faintly, thinking that she had now experienced it in both roles and knew that no action could be lower or more futile than for one person to throw upon another the burden of his abdication of choice.†   (source)
  • What I've learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one's reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one's master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person's view requires to be faked.†   (source)
  • To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one's thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one's mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.†   (source)
  • For example, we are told that Lear "has no necessity or motive for his abdication", although his reason for abdicating (that he is old and wishes to retire from the cares of state) has been clearly indicated in the first scene.†   (source)
  • …of Brandenburg-Ansbach and King George the Second had been solemnized, while those of Berengaria of Navarre to King Richard the First were hardly more than a distant memory; Diocletian, Charles the Fifth, and Victor Amadeus of Sardinia, had all abdicated their thrones; Henry James Pye, Poet Laureate of England, was with his fathers; Cassiodorus, Quintilian, Juvenal, Lucretius, Martial, and Albert the Bear of Brandenburg had answered the last great roll-call; the battles of Antietam,…†   (source)
  • For example, we are told that Lear "has no necessity or motive for his abdication", although his reason for abdicating (that he is old and wishes to retire from the cares of state) has been clearly indicated in the first scene.†   (source)
  • He abdicated at Fontainebleau in 1814, and was sent to the Island of Elba.†   (source)
  • Upon earth, in the midst of the darkest night, light never abdicates its functions altogether.†   (source)
  • But in that association there is no abdication.†   (source)
  • The sanctuary of virtue cannot cohabit longer with crime without abdicating.†   (source)
  • A people which accepts a charter abdicates.†   (source)
  • C'est une abdication," she said.†   (source)
  • And so I have never regretted giving up either diplomacy or journalism—two different forms of the same self-abdication.†   (source)
  • …to remain on his 'high horse' and to cheat the desire that she had kindled in him, to substitute a pleasure different from that which he might have tasted in her company by writing to invite one of his former mistresses to come and join him, would have seemed to him as cowardly an abdication in the face of life, as stupid a renunciation of a new form of happiness as if, instead of visiting the country where he was, he had shut himself up in his own rooms and looked at 'views' of Paris.†   (source)
  • It seemed to her that such a one abdicated all claim to enjoy the fruits of those friendly relations with people of good position which prudent parents cultivate and store up for their children's benefit, for my great-aunt had actually ceased to 'see' the son of a lawyer we had known because he had married a 'Highness' and had thereby stepped down—in her eyes—from the respectable position of a lawyer's son to that of those adventurers, upstart footmen or stable-boys mostly, to whom we…†   (source)
  • She could not do so, without comparing herself with Miss Larolles, the inimitable Miss Larolles; but still she did it, and not with much happier effect; though by what seemed prosperity in the shape of an early abdication in her next neighbours, she found herself at the very end of the bench before the concert closed.†   (source)
  • I don't think poor Amelia cared anything about Brienne and Montmirail, or was fairly interested in the war until the abdication of the Emperor; when she clapped her hands and said prayers—oh, how grateful! and flung herself into George Osborne's arms with all her soul, to the astonishment of everybody who witnessed that ebullition of sentiment.†   (source)
  • For in the first hour of meeting you, I had an impression of your eminent and perhaps exclusive fitness to supply that need (connected, I may say, with such activity of the affections as even the preoccupations of a work too special to be abdicated could not uninterruptedly dissimulate); and each succeeding opportunity for observation has given the impression an added depth by convincing me more emphatically of that fitness which I had preconceived, and thus evoking more decisively…†   (source)
  • It seemed to him so inconsequent, such a conclusive proof of his having abdicated all functions and renounced all exercise, that he should start on a journey across Europe under the supervision of Miss Stackpole.†   (source)
  • The political question which he is called upon to resolve is connected with the interest of the suitors, and he cannot refuse to decide it without abdicating the duties of his post.†   (source)
  • For all I do know he may be a prince in disguise; he rather looks like one, by the way—like a prince who has abdicated in a fit of fastidiousness and has been in a state of disgust ever since.†   (source)
  • *b If America ever approached (for however brief a time) that lofty pinnacle of glory to which the fancy of its inhabitants is wont to point, it was at the solemn moment at which the power of the nation abdicated, as it were, the empire of the land.†   (source)
  • And within the house, as she ascended to the drawing-room, she perceived numerous signs of abdication; pictures removed from the walls and placed upon sofas, windows undraped and floors laid bare.†   (source)
  • Then added in a low whisper, "You understand that, on account of your uncle, M. Policar Morrel, who served under the other government, and who does not altogether conceal what he thinks on the subject, you are strongly suspected of regretting the abdication of Napoleon.†   (source)
  • Of course the lesser States could not subscribe to the application of this doctrine without, in fact, abdicating their existence in relation to the sovereignty of the Confederation; since they would have passed from the condition of a co-equal and co-legislative authority to that of an insignificant fraction of a great people.†   (source)
  • Happy is he who, when the hour strikes, takes a heroic resolve, and abdicates like Sylla or Origenes.†   (source)
  • Marius was the master of the house, there was abdication in his joy, he was the grandson of his grandson.†   (source)
  • Their eclipse is never an abdication.†   (source)
  • This abdication sets him free.†   (source)
  • If we are to credit the monk Austin Castillejo, this was the means employed by Charles the Fifth, desirous of seeing the Plombes for the last time after his abdication.†   (source)
  • The bridge of Austerlitz had abdicated, and was entitled the bridge of the King's Garden [du Jardin du Roi], a double enigma, which disguised the bridge of Austerlitz and the Jardin des Plantes at one stroke.†   (source)
  • We are few in number, we have a whole army arrayed against us; but we are defending right, the natural law, the sovereignty of each one over himself from which no abdication is possible, justice and truth, and in case of need, we die like the three hundred Spartans.†   (source)
  • One can consent to it for the first hour; one seats oneself on the throne of glowing iron, one places on one's head the crown of hot iron, one accepts the globe of red hot iron, one takes the sceptre of red hot iron, but the mantle of flame still remains to be donned, and comes there not a moment when the miserable flesh revolts and when one abdicates from suffering?†   (source)
  • In short, one day, M. Mabeuf quitted the Rue Mesieres, abdicated the functions of warden, gave up Saint-Sulpice, sold not a part of his books, but of his prints,— that to which he was the least attached,—and installed himself in a little house on the Rue Montparnasse, where, however, he remained but one quarter for two reasons: in the first place, the ground floor and the garden cost three hundred francs, and he dared not spend more than two hundred francs on his rent; in the second,…†   (source)
  • She looked repulsive, with her red nose, as people do when they abdicate their dignity.†   (source)
  • But if we're comparing men and men, not men and children or men and demigods, which is just what would please Caesar among us teeming democrats, and if we don't have any special wish to abdicate into some different, lower form of existence out of shame for our defects before the golden faces of these and other old-time men, then I have the right to praise Einhorn and not care about smiles of derogation from those who think the race no longer has in any important degree the traits we…†   (source)
  • I could abdicate.†   (source)
  • "Royalties may not abdicate," fell as a warning from pretty lips.†   (source)
  • To abdicate with the object of reigning seems to be the device of monasticism.†   (source)
  • But One does not lightly abdicate the honor To serve as target to the enemy (Cards, dice, fall again, and the cadets smoke with evident delight): Had I been present when your scarf fell low, —Our courage, Sir, is of a different sort— I would have picked it up and put it on.†   (source)
  • In America, as everyone knows, girls early sign the declaration of independence, and enjoy their freedom with republican zest, but the young matrons usually abdicate with the first heir to the throne and go into a seclusion almost as close as a French nunnery, though by no means as quiet.†   (source)
  • Summer does not abdicate.†   (source)
  • The Allies defeated Napoleon, entered Paris, forced Napoleon to abdicate, and sent him to the island of Elba, not depriving him of the title of Emperor and showing him every respect, though five years before and one year later they all regarded him as an outlaw and a brigand.†   (source)
  • A people which should divide its sovereignty into fractional powers, in the presence of the great military monarchies of Europe, would, in my opinion, by that very act, abdicate its power, and perhaps its existence and its name.†   (source)
  • But the bourgeois of the epoch of la Minerve estimated so highly that poor de, that they thought themselves bound to abdicate it.†   (source)
  • …King Charles I. the same day Sir John Hotham was put to death by the parliament for that very action: The same day that the King himself signed the warrant for the execution of the Earl of Stafford, the same day of the month was he barbarously murdered by the blood-thirsty Oliverian crew: and the same day that King James II. came to the crown against the bill of exclusion, the same day he was voted abdicated by the parliament, and the throne filled with King William and Queen Mary.†   (source)
  • For them predicted long, For a superber race, they too to grandly fill their time, For them we abdicate, in them ourselves ye forest kings.'†   (source)
▲ show less (of above)