RELIC • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Relic

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/rˈɛlɪk/ Listen

noun

Relic n. (Formerly written also relique)

That which remains; that which is left after loss or decay; a remaining portion; a remnant. "The relics of lost innocence." "The fragments, scraps, the bits and greasy relics."

The body from which the soul has departed; a corpse; especially, the body, or some part of the body, of a deceased saint or martyr; usually in the plural when referring to the whole body. "There are very few treasuries of relics in Italy that have not a tooth or a bone of this saint." "Thy relics, Rowe, to this fair urn we trust, And sacred place by Dryden's awful dust."

Hence, a memorial; anything preserved in remembrance; as, relics of youthful days or friendships. "The pearls were spilt; Some lost, some stolen, some as relics kept."

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Etymology of 'Relic'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Relic" Quotes from Famous Books

... Rotherfield, and Mayfield. Mr. Lower says the fourth in descent from this person kept the turnpike-gate at Wadhurst, and that the last of the family, a day-labourer, emigrated to America in 1839, carrying with him, as the sole relic of his family greatness, the royal grant of free warren given to his ancestor. The Barhams and Mansers were also great iron-men, officiating as high sheriffs of the county at different times, and occupying spacious mansions. One branch of these families terminated, Mr. ...

— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... spoke, with his back to a rock, and over his knee he levelled a long brass telescope. From his saddle Langdon unslung a binocular glass imported from Paris. The telescope was a relic of the Civil War. Together, their shoulders touching as they steadied themselves against the rock, they studied the rolling slopes and the green sides of the ...

— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood

... signature of some mysterious principle may be found in every object of art or nature. Science in its infancy was still half mystic, and the facts which he gathered were all tinged with the semi-mythical fancies of the earliest explorers of the secrets of nature. In an old relic, recalling 'the drums and tramplings of three conquests,' in a queer annual, or an ancient fragment of history might be the appropriate emblem, or something more than the emblem of a truth equally impressive to the ...

— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... in the person of the Roman emperor, Heraclius (610-641 A.D.). His brilliant campaigns against Chosroes partook of the nature of a crusade, or "holy war," for the Persians had violated the Holy Sepulcher at Jerusalem and had stolen away the True Cross, the most sacred relic of Christendom. Heraclius recovered all his provinces, but only at the cost of a bloody struggle which drained them of men and money and helped to make them fall easy victims to foes still more terrible than the Persians. These ...

— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... man-of-war's-man. I well remember hearing him say that his father, who had been mate of a merchantman, and had been lost at sea when he himself was a boy, was a Shetlander; and in an old Testament which had belonged to his mother, and which he had treasured as the only relic of either of his parents, I found the name written Troil. The ink was very faint, but I made out the words clearly, "Margaret Troil, given to her by her husband Angus." This confirmed me in the idea I had formed, that both my father's ...

— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston

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