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Derelict   Listen
noun
Derelict  n.  (Law)
(a)
A thing voluntary abandoned or willfully cast away by its proper owner, especially a ship abandoned at sea.
(b)
A tract of land left dry by the sea, and fit for cultivation or use.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Derelict" Quotes from Famous Books



... skipper; and—"Luff it is!" echoed the man at the wheel mechanically as he put the helm up; and a moment afterwards the ship glided by the derelict hull, her speed lessening as she came up to the wind and her canvas quivering, like a bird suspending its flight in ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... population of its own, the Spanish authority almost extinct, and the colonial governments in a state of revolution, having no pretension to it, and sufficiently employed in their own concerns, it was in great measure derelict, and the object of cupidity to every adventurer. A system of buccaneering was rapidly organizing over it which menaced in its consequences the lawful commerce of every nation, and particularly the United States, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... have said in continuation was not heard. Surprised by the utter silence on board, he had shared with Fitz the feeling that they must have boarded some derelict whose crew, perhaps in great peril, had deserted their vessel and sought safety ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn

... Revenge in the memorable fight between that one little man-of-war and fifty-three great galleons of Spain. After the battle come storm and shipwreck, and the lads, having drifted for days, find refuge on board a derelict galleon, whence they are rescued and brought home ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty

... you are on duty or off duty, so far as this Company is concerned. They demand the whole and entire time of their men, and they are going to have it.' Short, sharp, peremptory this, but is also a high-handed proceeding—an infringement upon personal rights. It does not appear that this man had been derelict in duty to his employers, or that he took the time that belonged to them in promoting the cause of temperance. His only offence was that, while conscientious in daily work, he thought of others, and labored for their welfare in his ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith

... deteriorated in his own estimation. It was difficult to believe that a mere change of apparel could make such a vast difference. But one satisfaction he could not deny himself. It was unlikely that anyone would recognize, in the human derelict before the looking-glass, Herbert Whitmore, millionaire, owner of the great Whitmore Iron Works. It was certain that his most intimate friend would have ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin

... grandmother's spinet and harpsichord, and every girl in every family was taught to play upon it after a fashion. She who had not taste or talent for music gave it up after her marriage. In this particular she was no more derelict than the "performer" of our times, whose florid flourish of classic music costs thousands where her grandmother's strumming ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... labor a larger share of the total industrial product. A democratic government has little or less reason to interfere on behalf of the non-union laborer than it has to interfere in favor of the small producer. As a type the non-union laborer is a species of industrial derelict. He is the laborer who has gone astray and who either from apathy, unintelligence, incompetence, or some immediately pressing need prefers his own individual interest to the joint interests of himself and his fellow-laborers. From the point of view ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... and withered man, that derelict of art, Who for a paltry franc will make a crayon sketch of you? In slouching hat and shabby cloak he looks and is the part, A sodden old Bohemian, without a single sou. A boon companion of the ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... colour, bits of corrugated iron, bits of netting screens, more wire, dead horses, dead men in all stages of decomposition, legs, hands, heads scattered anywhere, dead trees, mud, broken rifles, gas-bags, tin helmets, bully-beef tins, derelict trenches, derelict telephone wires, grenades, aerial torpedoes, all the toys of war, broken and useless. Tommy, the dear hairies, and the R.E. dumps, to remind you what vast stores of ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson

... it all up. The skipper, most likely, had finished his tea, and the mate was hard at work at his, when the leak had been discovered, or some derelict had been run into, or whatever ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... the guy was duly loaded with his explosive internals, and clad in an old derelict overcoat of some late senior. My famous hat adorned his hideous head, and my unappreciated tan boots lent distinction to his somewhat incoherent legs. A train of touch-paper connected with a Roman candle was cunningly ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed

... of strange yellow butterflies with semi-transparent wings crossed the river that morning, and many alighted on the monitor and were killed by the men. It was towards afternoon that they came upon the derelict cuberta. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... from the United States and other countries, this clay land was widely cultivated for wheat and beans. So long as wheat was 60/- to 100/- a quarter it was a very profitable crop, but, when some forty years ago it fell to 40/- and then lower still, the land either went out of cultivation like the "derelict" farms of Essex, or it was changed to grass land and used for cattle grazing. Great was the distress that followed; some districts indeed were years in recovering. But new methods came in: the land near London was used for dairy {101} farming, and ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell

... spent the night in cells, indifferent now as to the front they presented to the world, the finery rued that they had tended so carefully to catch the eyes of men on the darkened streets; brazen young girls, who blazed forth defiance to all order; derelict men, sodden and hopeless, with scrubby beards; shifty looking burglars and pickpockets. All these I beheld, at first with twinges of pity, later to mass them with the ugly and inevitable with whom society had to deal somehow. Lawyers, after all, must be practical men. I came to know the justices ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... didn't recollect you at first, Mr. Lynde; my memory for names and faces is shockingly derelict, but I have retained most of my other faculties in tolerably good order. I have been unreserved with you because ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... him the right of all property which may be recovered from shipwreck, capture, or any other peril stated in the policy. Other parties entering and bringing the vessel into port obtain salvage. (Vide DERELICT.) ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... derelict barque of a sun gone dark, Adrift on our fair ship's path, A beacon star shall guide us afar, And far ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... Murphy had been copartners in a tremendous secret enterprise. Down in the green tunnel made by the "Birch Crick," where it foamed along through a tangle of timber and underbrush, until it found its way into the Oro, they had discovered, early that spring, a derelict punt. This craft had come like an answer to prayer; they had patched it up, launched it, and, before the holidays, had spent aboard its rotten timbers days of perfectly abandoned joy. Several times, indeed, they ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith

... the Cure of Stammering: In speaking of the necessity for good health, both physical and mental, before the eradication of stammering can take place, we must not overlook a few words about one particular type of derelict—the will-less or sometimes wilful individual who persists in indulging in dissipation of every kind, the individual who, with cocksure attitude and haughty sneer, laughs in the face of experience and insists that "it will not bother him." To such as these, ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue

... the officer, looking thoughtfully at the derelict. The boat was pulling up towards the lee side and the smoke was stifling. The burning steamer was rolling heavily and there was a ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... most hopeless of futures before her. He argued with himself that no doubt the gatekeeper's guess was correct; the money had belonged to some sailor or pilot, who had been drowned, and his personal effects, whether found on his dead body, or perhaps in the hold of a derelict, sold. Certainly these notes did not belong to the old-clothes' man in the Minories. It almost seemed as if a special act of Providence had placed this money at his disposal to succour this helpless one in her ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black

... went to his work as usual, and their laborious and quiet existence remained undisturbed; nor could Mrs. Gerhardt tell whether her man's ever-deepening silence was due to his "fancying things" or to the demeanour of his neighbours and fellow workmen. One would have said that he, like the derelict aunt, was deaf, so difficult to converse with had he become. His length of sojourn in England and his value to his employers, for he had real skill, had saved him for the time being; but, behind the screen, Fate ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy

... neglected its opportunities," grumbled the Poet, surveying with disfavor the dusty, derelict scene. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... world he had visited with her. Only this time, humbly. Standing on the outside of palaces and embassies, recollecting the times when he had been a guest within. Rubbing shoulders with the crowd outside, shabby, poor, a derelict. Seeking always to recover that ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... the kids, why, they have gone rotten since my day. Will you be surprised to learn that it is about Buccaneers, that it begins in the ADMIRAL BENBOW public-house on Devon coast, that it's all about a map, and a treasure, and a mutiny, and a derelict ship, and a current, and a fine old Squire Trelawney (the real Tre, purged of literature and sin, to suit the infant mind), and a doctor, and another doctor, and a sea-cook with one leg, and a sea-song with the chorus 'Yo-ho-ho-and ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... every part of Ireland, and industry throve. Those things cannot be done by an absentee Parliament. They can only be done by a Parliament on the spot. They are intensely and earnestly needed by Ireland at present. For Ireland is largely an industrial derelict, waiting for the restoring hand of a central governing power. It is impossible to put this aspect of the matter into figures. Here we must move in faith. But we cannot see this matter clearly unless we believe firmly—as ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender

... Washington was hampered by the fact that judicial action in such a case lies with the individual state under our form of government, whereas diplomatic action is of course entirely federal. If the states are tardy or derelict in action, the national government is almost helpless. President Harrison urged Congress to make offenses against the treaty rights of foreigners cognizable in the federal courts, but this was never done. Diplomatic activity, however, brought ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... Imbros. Church Parade. Inspected escort, men of the Howe and Nelson Battalions and a contingent from the 12th and 26th Australian Infantry. At 12.15 Bailloud, Brulard and Girodon arrived from Mudros for a last conference. Everything is fixed up. We are going to help the derelict division of French in every way we can. Bailloud, for his part, promises to leave them their fair share of guns and trench mortars. Whenever I see him I know he is one of the best fellows in the world. ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton

... Andrew. If I asked her to come back and save my lad, I'd have to surrender him to her, and I would be derelict in my duty as a father if I permitted that. Better that he should pass out now than know the horror of a living death through all the years to come. God knows best. It is up to Him. Let there be no talk of this thing again, Andrew." Abruptly he quitted the room and ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... of Shafto's mind he dragged out a memory of FitzGerald's mention of a broken-down petrol boat. Here was probably the very one—by no means a derelict; on the contrary, a fast traveller. For a moment he was startled, then promptly made up his mind. This was a chance, perhaps, to secure some really valuable kubber. More than once he had heard it rumoured that, in these distant creeks and bays, some of the smugglers had discharged their ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... attempt to break. This was one among her many charms to Dr. Eben, that she was capable of sitting quietly by a person's side for long intervals of silence. The average woman, when she is in the company of even a single person, seems to consider herself derelict in duty, if conversation is not what she calls "kept up;" an instinctive phrase, which, by its universal use, is the bitterest comment on its own significance. Men have no such feeling. Two men will sit by each other's side, it may be for hours, in silence, ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous

... that enchanting forenoon was so profound, so untroubled, that it seemed that every word pronounced loudly on our deck would penetrate to the very heart of that infinite mystery born from the conjunction of water and sky. We did not raise our voices. "A water-logged derelict, I think, sir," said the second officer quietly, coming down from aloft with the binoculars in their case slung across his shoulders; and our captain, without a word, signed to the helmsman to steer for the black speck. Presently we made out ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... of the sturdy craft "Nomad" and the stranger experiences of the Rangers themselves with Morello's schooner and a mysterious derelict form the basis of this well-spun ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... it. What was the use of being pretty? No longer use to anyone! Not yet twenty-six, and in a nunnery! With a shiver, but not of cold, she drew her wrapper close. This time last year she had at least been in the main current of life, not a mere derelict. And yet—better far be like this than go back to him whom memory painted always standing over her sleeping baby, with his arms stretched out and his ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... morning and two hours at night. Other printers offered to help, and a genial, bum electrotyper, damnably cheerful, offered to come in and lend a hand, provided Henry George would agree to give a funeral oration over the derelict one's grave at the proper time. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard

... booked for quite a long trip, this time; across the continent to the Pacific coast, where they are destined to have some stirring adventures, searching for a mysterious derelict. ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young

... tall bulrushes. The distance across was no more than fifty yards, but I would have swum a mile more readily in deep water. The place stank of crocodiles. There was no ripple to break the oily flow except where a derelict branch swayed with the current. Something in the stillness, the eerie light on the water, and the rotting smell of the swamp made that stream ...
— Prester John • John Buchan

... historiographer to the French Court, who was of course jealous that any one else should know more about the origins of the French monarchy than he did. His pretension, however, was easily refuted by Henschenius, who showed that he had himself discovered this derelict king twelve years before Valesius turned his thoughts to the subject, having published in 1654 a dissertation upon him distinct from those embodied in the "Acta Sanctorum." Hallam, in his "History of the Middle Ages," introduces this ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... The pilot thought they were funny, too, for when he passed he grinned and jerked his head back to call my attention to them. He called to know what had happened to me, and I told him that I was a derelict, and he would ascertain the ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... how his entire capital was in cash at the time, when he was supposed to be in trade; but even if derelict, he was too far away to be sought out and his story investigated, so the loss was accepted by the family as an indication that Providence was not inclined to smile upon the substitution of the eldest for the youngest son as a retriever of the ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober

... the derelict they were surprised to note that it was the same vessel that had run from them a few weeks earlier. Her forestaysail and mizzen spanker were set as though an effort had been made to hold her head up into the wind, but the sheets had ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Carolina, beside the border population entering through Virginia and containing much of a backwoods and derelict nature, came many Huguenots, the best of folk, and industrious Swiss, and Germans from the Rhine. Then the Scotch began to come in numbers, and families of Scotch descent from the north of Ireland. The tone of society consequently changed from that of ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston

... the chicks and the porkers, has been received with some indulgence; why should not my harsh school of solitude possess its interest as well? Let us try to describe it. And who knows? Perhaps, in doing so, I shall revive the courage of some other poor derelict ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... dollars to the Widow Brackett; and the Widow Brackett almost as promptly made a few alterations in the up-stairs of her house the better to accommodate the orphans, tied a dirty white ribbon about the yellow cat's neck, and bought a derelict piano upon which her heart had been set for many months. She was no musician, but she loved a tightly closed piano with a scarf draped over the top, and thought that no parlor should be without one. Up to middle C, as Aladdin in time found out, the piano in question was not without ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris

... wife had received no intelligence of the missing man. As dawn appeared, a farm wagon containing a farmer and the derelict husband drove up to the house, while behind the wagon trailed the broken-down auto. Almost simultaneously came a messenger boy with an answer to one of the telegrams, followed at intervals by five ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... Mitsunari himself was a Christian convert, and the Jesuit fathers explain that his position and that of the other Christian leaders were due to their conscientious desire to fulfil their oath of fidelity to Hideyori. That Ieyasu should have been derelict in such a solemn duty was a sufficient cause for their ...
— Japan • David Murray

... got away with it, sir. Remember our cargo was for the Peruvian government and they'd had the devil's own time getting it; consequently they couldn't afford to lose any part of it and have their anchorage ground menaced by a derelict. So the captain of the port took it up with the commandant of the local garrison, and the commandant, as Joey expressed it, heard the Macedonian cry and got busy. He commandeered all the lighters the other schooners were using; the soldiers rounded up ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... the hotel proprietress. The Shah's A.D.C. and favourite music-composer and pianist came frequently to enliven the evenings with some really magnificent playing, and by way of diversion some wild Belgian employees of the derelict sugar-factory used almost nightly to cover with insults a notable "Chevalier d'industrie" whose thick ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... of dawn was paling the stars ahead of him when the dim outlines of a low-lying black mass loomed up directly in his track. A few strong strokes brought him to its side—it was the bottom of a wave-washed derelict. Tarzan clambered upon it—he would rest there until daylight at least. He had no intention to remain there inactive—a prey to hunger and thirst. If he must die he preferred dying in action while making some semblance of ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... down to the harbour and saw the craft on which he had undertaken to embark he was seized with a sudden faintness. Even the toughest seafarer would have thought twice before venturing beyond the breakwater in such an unsavoury derelict; and Reginald, be it remembered, had only once in his life made a sea voyage, and that in the peaceful security of an ironclad. His heart quailed beneath his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various

... thousand miles away in the unknown land; while once in every quarter of an hour or so he woke up to a momentary consciousness that he was a thing neither rich nor rare, and so wondered how in thunder he got there. He is a derelict, a fragment of flotsam and jetsam cast upon the not too hospitable shore of civilization after the great storm had lashed the Southern sea to frenzy and the ship of slavery had gone to pieces forever. Possibly he is a good deal more human than he looks, ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... fourpence and takes your choice," I said, with an intended grandiloquent sweep of my hand towards the dozen derelict beds. We selected two that lay in an alcove at the end of the room farthest from the door, and turned in. In a few minutes ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... Dunsack—" he stopped, lost in speculation. Then, "He seems harmless enough," he resumed, "even pitiful; but he sticks in your head. I wish I'd never brought his damned chest to Salem. A fool would have known better. I'm worse—a childish fool. A derelict," he said again. "You are smashing over a swell at twelve knots or more, everything spread, when, in a hollow, there it is squarely across your bow. No time to shift the wheel, and a ship's missing, perhaps in a hundred fathom. ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... didn't like to think it of her, but he found he wasn't sure. Perhaps, if there had been a croix de guerre! He had promised her to win that and no end of other honors, when he went away so buoyant and hopeful; but almost on his first day of real battle he had been hurt and tossed aside like a derelict, to languish in a hospital, with no more hope of winning anything. And now he had come home with one foot gone, ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill

... had no present doubt of me, only the caution natural to one leading his life of danger. He believed my story, and nothing thus far had arisen to bring him the slightest doubt. To his mind I was a reckless adventurer, ruined by drink, a drifting derelict, so glad to be picked up, and given rank, as to be forever grateful and loyal to the one aiding me. While his instinct made him distrust an Englishman, he already had some measure of faith in me personally, yet this confidence was still so light ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish

... dingy tramp steamer, her superstructure wrecked. Her fires seemed dead. She lay across the wind, rolling sluggishly, threatening to sink with every monstrous wave. We saw no living person aboard her; she seemed a sinking derelict. We made out the name Roma ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various

... day's slow-dying pain ... The last, last time, The last— That time is past; yet in too-golden day My heart goes from me whispering, "Where are you—you—you—you?" And comes back easeless to an easeless breast. But at night I rest Dreamless as derelict ships ride out to sea Empty, and no bird even on the snapp'd mast Pauses: into oblivion her shadow's cast; Into the empty night goes lonely she, And into ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman

... suddenly checked; and an interested look came on his face. There was something coming down the river. He rose quickly to his feet in order to get a better view of the object which had suddenly floated into his line of vision. It was a canoe. It appeared to be empty, and thinking it was a derelict drifting from some camp up river, he threw himself down again, for even if he salved it, it could be of no possible use to him. Lying there he watched it as it drifted nearer in the current, wondering idly whence it had ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns

... world is at present strewn with the debris of paper constitutions, which are, or are probably about to become, derelict. The case of Egypt is somewhat special, and would require separate treatment. But in Turkey, in Persia, and in China, the epidemic, which is of an exotic character, appears to be following ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... or two men of the crew, when the boat was struck by a heavy squall in a thunderstorm somewhere off the Hamble river, and they are all supposed to have been struck by lightning. Sir Joseph's body was found floating, the boat was picked up derelict in the West Channel. No one was left to tell the tale; the tablet in Hamble church, which is the only record I know of it, merely states he was drowned by the upsetting of a boat. I believe he had ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury

... his money was gone and his protection worthless, when the inevitable overtook him. The ubiquitous gang deprived him of his only remaining possession, his worthless liberty, and sent him to the fleet, a ragged but shameless derelict, as a punishment for his breach ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... Hampshire, and laid flat on the mud along the main routes to the tents and sheds, but they were quickly trodden in out of sight. Many ponderous engines were bogged on their way to their appointed places; nothing could move them, and they remained looking like derelict wrecks, plastered with mud, sunk unevenly above the axles of ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... was left to pursue its tranquil way undisturbed by stage or tourist. Still it remains, if stagnant, self-respecting, has a hotel, a post office and a street of stores, along which the human flotsam and jetsam of the mineral belt may drift without exciting comment. A derelict could pass along its wooden sidewalk, drop a letter in the post box, even buy a box of cartridges without attracting notice. And even if he should be noticed, Farleys was sleepy and a good way from anywhere. Warnings sent from there would not be acted upon too quickly. ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... a sense, we are all brothers; but that did not prevent him from considering that this mud-stained derelict had made an impudent and abominable mis-statement of fact. Not unnaturally he came to the conclusion that he had to do with a ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... near her," answered the young inventor. "But it may be some other half-submerged derelict. I'll ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton

... formed an admirable base from which to "work" the Mediterranean from the piratical point of view. Jerba had originally been conquered and occupied by the Spaniards in 1431, but the occupation had been allowed to lapse, and the island was lying derelict when the Barbarossas made it their headquarters. Here Uruj was joined by his younger brother Khizr, destined to become so much the more famous of the two; he had already made himself some reputation in piratical circles, and now brought ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... one side, with no change in the direction of its motion. It floated onward. It was broadside to its line of travel. It continued to turn. It hurtled stern-first toward the Niccola. It did not swerve. It did not dance. It was a lifeless hulk: a derelict in space. ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster

... hotel being at church. 'This,' he said, 'is the way in which our valuable city hotels—packed no doubt with gems and jewellery—are deserted on a Sunday morning. Some bold piratical fellow, defying the spirit of Sabbatarianism, might make a handsome revenue by sacking the derelict hotels between the hours of ten and twelve. One hotel a week would enable such a man to retire in course of a year. A mask might perhaps be worn for the mere fancy of the thing, and to terrify kitchen-maids, but no real disguise would ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... and kicking off his breeches with a glance at the derelict, launched himself clear of the pier with a shout. And Nance, seeing the bulk of the man, and careless of everything but Bernel who seemed so very small compared with him, threw off her sun-bonnet and linen jacket, loosed a button, ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... was hovering off the British coast, watching for an opportunity to strike the enemy a blow. It deals more particularly with his descent upon Whitehaven, the seizure of Lady Selkirk's plate, and the famous battle with the Drake. The boy who figures in the tale is one who was taken from a derelict by Paul Jones shortly after this particular cruise was ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis

... I am derelict if I do not manage a jaunt to the Cliff House. The most desirable method demands a span of horses for a spin out Point Lobos Avenue. We may, however, be obliged to take a McGinn bus that leaves the ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock

... attached to the insignificant scene of their death by the thousand little threads of insipid memories and infantile hobbies. They are supposed to be here, blocking up our homes, more abjectly human than if they were still alive, vague, inconsistent, garrulous, derelict, futile and idle, tossing hither and thither their desolate shadows, which are being slowly swallowed up by silence and oblivion, busying themselves incessantly with what no longer concerns them, but almost incapable of doing ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck

... feet ran down to meet the dazzling waters of the bay, the blue waters of the bay ran to meet a great stretch of absinthe green, the green joined a fairy sky of pink and gold and saffron. Islands of coral floated on the sea of absinthe, and derelict clouds of mother-of-pearl swung low above them, starting from nowhere and going nowhere, but drifting beautifully, like giant soap-bubbles of light and color. Where the lawn touched the waters of the bay the cocoanut-palms reached their crooked lengths far up into the sunshine, ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... leader, "that the one found guilty of deceiving or betraying the others to the very smallest extent should pay the penalty which we are all sworn to exact. A part of this agreement, as we all remember, is that the one found derelict shall be the first to insist on the visitation of the penalty, and that should he fail to do so—but I trust that it is unnecessary to mention ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow

... boat altered his course slightly and reached down towards the derelict As he neared her he dropped his sail and ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham

... brain moved keenly to the possibility that he could put a name to this human derelict they had picked up. He began to see it as more than a possibility, as even a probability, at least as a fifty-fifty chance. A sardonic grin hovered about the corners of his grim mouth. It would be a strange freak of irony if Wally Selfridge, to prevent a meeting between him and the Government land ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine

... direction. At a later period of life should any disease believed to be infectious break out in a tribe, "those attacked by it are immediately left, even by their closest relatives, the house is abandoned, and possibly even burnt. Such derelict houses are no uncommon sight in the forest, grimly desolate mementoes of possible tragedies." When a person becomes insane, he is first of all exorcised by the medicine man, and if that fails is ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

... instinctive vessel of divine fire to bless and inspire. But such vessels very often go on the reefs of passion, and if Milly had not been so thoroughly normal in her instincts, she might have suffered shipwreck before this. Otherwise, they float out at middle age more or less derelict in the human sea, unless they have been captured and converted willy-nilly to some other's purpose. Now Milly was drifting towards that dead sea of purposeless middle age, and instinctively ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... its own people do not control is a nation without a Government. It is a derelict on the international sea. It is a danger to its neighbors, a greater danger to itself. Of all the many issues, good or bad, which may come from this war, none is more important than this, that the German people should take ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... speedier-seeming of the two launches—Gavin sprang as he shoved it free from the float. And, before the nearest of the island men could reach shore, he had the motor purring. Satisfied that the tide had caught the rest of the fleet and that the stiff tradewind was doing even more to send the derelict boats out of reach from shore or from possible swimmers he turned the head of his unwieldy launch toward the mainland, pointing it northeastward and making ready to wind his course through the straits which laced the various islets lying between ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... meant. The German gun had got its bracket. The battery had ceased to fire shrapnel, and was pouring high-explosive about the derelict gun. The white bursts of shrapnel had given place to a series of spouting volcanoes that leaped from the ground about the gun itself. Another German shell fell in front of the battery and a good 200 yards nearer to it. A movement below ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)

... unhallowed wedlock's vodka-shower, She passionate, he dispassionate; tricked Her wits to eye-blind; borrowed the ready as for dower; Till from the trance of that Hymettus-moon She woke, A nuptial-knotted derelict; Pensioned with Rescripts other aid declined By the plumped leech saturate urging Peace In guise of heavy-armed Gospeller to men, Tyrannical unto fraternal equal liberal, her. Not she; Not till Alsace her ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... was a little yacht of five tons, which had been sent out with only one man to take her from Dover to Ryde. Poor fellow! he had lost his way at night and was unable to keep awake, until at last two fishermen fell in with the derelict and brought him in here, hungry and amazed; but I regarded him with a good deal of interest as rather in my line of life, and I quite understood his drowsy feelings when staring at the compass in the ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... As though it gave him confidence, the horse went on quietly, feeling his master's hand upon him. Just opposite the gable of the cottage a wall of loose stones led into the O'Hart park. The house had been long derelict and was going to be pulled down, now that the Congested Board, as the people called it, had acquired the ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan

... picked her up as a derelict," said Tom. "And we'll claim salvage accordingly. But how did ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield

... and contend further that, in the North, every member of the nation is bound by both natural and constitutional law to "maintain and defend the Government against all its enemies and opposers whomsoever." If they fail to do it they are derelict, and can be punished, or deprived of all advantages arising from the labors of those who do. If any man, North or South, withholds his share of taxes, or his physical assistance in this, the crisis of our history, he should be deprived of all voice in the future elections of this ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... was broad, but it narrowed suddenly on rounding a bend about a hundred yards away. The house-boat was in sight now, moored close to a tiny island. Arnold pulled up alongside and paused to reconnoiter. To all appearance, it was a derelict. There were no awnings, no carpets, no baskets of flowers. The outside was grievously in need of paint. It had an entirely uninhabited and desolate appearance. Arnold beached his boat upon the little island ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... room. Outside the door he turned and stared at the panels. Why hadn't he gone on with the girl's story? What instinct had stuffed it back into his throat? Why the inexplicable impulse to hurry this rather pathetic derelict on his way? ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... into an alley which led to an open space on the edge of a derelict clearing. There, to my surprise, I found a considerable company assembled. Grey was there with his second, and a dozen or more of his companions stood back in the shadow of the trees. The young blood of Virginia had come out to see the ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... very night by Erasmus from the north, Meyer from the east, and Viljoen from the west. By midday, communication by rail with Ladysmith was cut off—not, however, until a party of fifty of the 1st King's Royal Rifles had returned in safety from a visit to Waschbank, where they had rescued some derelict trucks left by a train, which, having been fired on at Elandslaagte, had dropped them for greater speed. Three companies 2nd Royal Dublin Fusiliers, which had been railed to the Navigation Collieries, north-east of Hatting Spruit, at 3 a.m., to bring back eight tons of mealies which the General ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice

... copped him for "larceny by finding,"—that's all! But SAILL couldn't read, and the jury was kindly, So EDDARD got off, though his chance appeared small. Now would this young Waterman keep out of sorrow, No derelict casks let him—shall we say, borrow? Madeira is nice, but you'd best have a care, Before swigging the wine, that it's yours fair ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 28, 1891 • Various

... unmischievous mouth and fangs so minute that, although classed as venomous, it is not considered injurious to man. Though strange and interesting, on the plea that the family is quite sufficiently represented, the derelict was unwelcome, save as a living proof of the practicability of natural transports. By what grace, indeed, could the creature which earned the Almighty's bitter curse be accepted as "wilsam"—goods of God's mercy driven ashore, no ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... Cook in 1769, lay derelict for half a century, and like others of our Colonies it came very near to passing under the rule of France. From this it was saved in 1840 by the foresight and energy of Gibbon Wakefield, who forced the ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... nadir of calamity. Outliving his mighty Empire, girt around by a thousand miles of imprisoning ocean, guarded by his most steadfast enemies, his son a captive at the Court of the Hapsburgs, and his Empress openly faithless, he sinks from sight like some battered derelict. And Nature is more pitiless than man. The Governor urges on him the best medical advice: but he will have none of it. He feels the grip of cancer, the disease which had carried off his father and was to claim the gay Caroline and Pauline. At times he surmises the truth: at others he calls ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... fashion, with the derelict Wireless bobbing behind, they finally drew up at the wharf in front of the Memphis levee, where a score or two of black roustabouts and loungers flocked around them to look with evident delight upon the two neat ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel

... Frank observed, "was a derelict when we picked her up, wasn't she? She couldn't move a foot. Well, then, we're entitled to salvage. We'll put in a bill that will eat up the ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson

... retirement and the abandonment of the guns. The main naval battery remained in position west of the railway for some hours, and in its presence the Boers were afraid to cross the river and take possession of the derelict but not disabled guns; which were not captured until all the British troops had left the field except a few gunners and infantry details who had taken refuge in the deep donga and whom the order to retreat had not reached; and these were ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... required her stirring words to enlist the enthusiasm of the company concerning the economic change which the railways were to bring to Wales. Derelict acres were to be brought into cultivation; "the very central town of the ancient Principality," in which that ceremony was taking place, was to become the capital of a new prosperity, and as for Mr. Whalley, were not that ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine

... sleeping-car, but though his chief anxiety was dispelled, his reluctance to go was not. And he looked at the long, brightly-lit train which was to carry him from this busy and high-hearted city with a desire that it would start before its time, and leave him a derelict upon the platform. He could not bend his thoughts to the work which was at his hand. The sapphire waters of the South had quite lost their sparkle and enchantment. Here, here, was the place of life! The exhilaration of his task, its importance, the glow of thankfulness when some real advantage was ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason

... hideous feeling. Something in the fog and in the night made an assault upon her imagination. Abruptly she was numbered among the derelict women whom nobody wants, whom no man thinks of or wishes to be with, whom no child calls mother. She felt physically and morally, "I am solitary," and it was horrible to her. She saw herself old ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... have me! One merely surmises just as one's temperament or convictions lean. Grisel says it's some poor derelict soul in search of peace—that the poor beggar wants finally to die, in fact, and can't. Sallie smells crime. After all, what is every man?' he talked on; 'a horde of ghosts—like a Chinese nest of boxes—oaks that were acorns that were oaks. Death ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... inspiration—the new field for his efforts, the call of the sea that paved a golden path around the world, the freedom for shoulder-swing to do all that a man was worth. Quick as flash, he was off—going with the tide now, not a derelict, not a stranded hull—off to shave, and wash, and respectable-ize, in order to apply ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... of our mud-flat and the adjacent camps, and that he could give us a mess. Through the insistent drizzle this person, smiling now very pleasantly, led us to a depressed wooden building that suggested a derelict Noah's Ark with a sinister look about the windows. The bad-tempered sky scowled between the planks of the roof; the querulous wind whined up through the floor; rats backed snarling into the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 5, 1917 • Various

... hurried dive. There would, probably, very soon be boats out too, seeking with a machine-gun or pompom for a chance at your occasionally emergent conning-tower. In no way can a submarine be more than purblind, it will be, in fact, practically blind. Given a derelict ironclad on a still night within sight of land, a carefully handled submarine might succeed in groping its way to it and destroying it; but then it would be much better to attack such a vessel and capture it boldly with a few desperate ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... poverty of these people, and admired the humbleness of these Cathedral servants, content to live and die in the same place, without any curiosity as to what was taking place outside the walls. The church seemed to him a huge derelict. It was like the petrified skeleton of one of those immense and powerful animals of former days, that had been dead for ages, its body decayed, its soul evaporated, and nothing left but this framework, like to the shells found by geologists in prehistoric strata ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... the New Haven criminals will some day serve in school text-books as the classic illustration of that financial piracy which brought on the American social revolution. Ben Hampton had bought the old derelict "Broadway Magazine", with twelve thousand subscribers, and in four years, by the simple process of straight truth-telling, had built up for it a circulation of 440,000. In two years more he would have had a million; but in May, 1911, he announced a series of articles ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... in the nature of things there cannot be too many pins, a pin that is out of place must be such by a derelict of duty." ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... He had been derelict. He didn't pretend to evade that. He could have forgiven her reproaches; welcomed them. But thanks to March, she had nothing to reproach him for The presence of a man she had known a matter of weeks obliterated past years like the writing on a child's slate. He tried to ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... minds. Every possible weapon was brought into play by international finance to secure that the impudence of financial independence should be properly checked; and so it happened that although L5,000,000 was secured after an intense struggle it was soon plain that the large requirements of a derelict government could not be satisfied in this Quixotic manner. Two important points had, however, been attained; first, China was kept financially afloat during the year 1912 by the independence of a single member of the London Stock Exchange; secondly, using this coup as ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... and takes the chair nearest the sofa, Christy having left the inkstand there. He puts his hat on the floor beside him, and produces the will. Uncle William comes to the fire and stands on the hearth warming his coat tails, leaving Mrs. William derelict near the door. Uncle Titus, who is the lady's man of the family, rescues her by giving her his disengaged arm and bringing her to the sofa, where he sits down warmly between his own lady and his brother's. Anderson hangs up his hat and waits for a ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw

... clear of or to move out of my way. Interruptions of this latter sort—even though they gave me a change from my wearying sawing—were hard to put up with; for they not only held me back woefully, but they kept me in continual alarm lest I should break my saw. When the obstacle was a derelict, or anything so large that I could see it well ahead of me and so could have plenty of time in which to swing the boat to one side of it by slicing a diagonal way for her, I could get along without much difficulty; ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier

... of the "Crow's Nest" A Red Girl's Reasoning The Envoy Extraordinary A Pagan in St. Paul's Cathedral As It Was in the Beginning The Legend of Lillooet Falls Her Majesty's Guest Mother o' the Men The Nest Builder The Tenas Klootchman The Derelict ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson

... Father Rameau came for her. A ship was to sail the next day for Montreal, and her mother would return in it. But when he looked in the child's eyes he knew the mother would go alone. Had he been derelict in duty and let this lamb wander from the fold? Father Gilbert blamed him. Even the mother had rebuked him sharply. Looking into the child's radiant face he understood that she had no vocation for a holy life. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... may have been that, having told Harden-Hickey of the derelict island, the latter persuaded the captain to allow him to land and explore it. Of this, at least, we are certain, a boat was sent ashore, Harden-Hickey went ashore in it, and before he left the island, as a piece of no man's land, ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... continually eclipses Algol, and so causes the temporary diminution of its light. As the sun rushes towards the constellation of Lyra such an extinguished sun may chance to find itself in his path; just as a derelict hulk may loom up out of the darkness right beneath the bows of a ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage

... the back water of the river overflowed the marsh,—submerging the withered grass and breaking high upon the foot-bridge,—it seemed for all the world like the original tenement of old Noah himself, derelict ever since his disembarkation, and stranded here after centuries of buffetings. On other days it had a sullen air, settling back in its bed of mud as if tired out with all these miseries, glaring at you with its one eye of a window aflame with ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith

... she was not. The next point, I remember, was, whether up to the time of the accident the ship had been navigated with proper and seamanlike care. They said Yes to that, goodness knows why, and then they declared that there was no evidence to show the exact cause of the accident. A floating derelict probably. I myself remember that a Norwegian barque bound out with a cargo of pitch-pine had been given up as missing about that time, and it was just the sort of craft that would capsize in a squall and float bottom up for months—a kind of maritime ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... face, and it had never seemed so dear to me. "The time for that is past," I said, my tone as calm and even as his own. "A man like you cannot burden himself with a derelict like me—mast gone, sails gone, water-logged, drifting. Five years from now you'll thank me for what I am saying now. My place is with this other wreck—tossed about by wind and weather until we both go down ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... he was too much overcome to speak. Then he raved round the room like a derelict ship, Red Wull following uneasily behind. He cursed; he blasphemed; he screamed and beat the walls with feverish hands. A stranger, passing, might well have thought this was a private Bedlam. At last, exhausted, he sat ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... boy—the faith that it wants and the patience that it wants! Sometimes it takes the heart out of a man! There're days when I feel like a derelict; when I say to myself, 'Here I am, thirty-eight years old, unanchored, unharbored.' Oh, I know I'm young as the world counts age! I know that plenty of men and women like me, and that I pass the time ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... ululation began to get upon my nerves. I found, moreover, that I was again extremely hungry and thirsty. It was already noon. Why was I wandering alone in this derelict city, clad in my wife's skirt ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas

... lady said that she had been over the house and everything was then fastened." O'Ryan looked anxiously at the coroner. Would he make him out derelict in his duty? It would seriously affect his standing on the Force. "I took Miss McIntyre's word for the house, for I had the burglar ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... work as a dresser in one of those temporary hospitals which sprang up everywhere in such hurry as the streams of wounded began to pour back from France. Ours was pitched in a derelict pleasure-ground on the right bank of Thames some way below Greenwich. . . . I don't suppose you ever visited Casterville Gardens: as neither had I until I entered them to do stretcher-drill, tend moaning ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... history of it from its modest beginnings to its now penultimate stage. From what I could make out—for the mistral whirled many of his words away over unheeding Provence—he had entered the Cafe de l'Univers one evening, a human derelict battered by buffeting waves of Fortune, and, finding a seat immediately beneath Mme. Gougasse's comptoir, had straightway poured his grievances into a feminine ear and, figuratively speaking, rested his weary heart upon a feminine bosom. And his buffetings and grievances and wearinesses? Whence ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... "I reported the derelict to a passing steamer that same day," he added, but the Admiral was calling for a chart. He spread it on the desk before him and placed the tip of a pencil in the center of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various

... are excluded because of the increased value of the land. Then there grow up slums which are inhabited by great numbers of the poorer classes who are unable to defend themselves from association with the derelict and vicious. In the course of time every section and quarter of the city takes on something of the character and qualities of its inhabitants. Each separate part of the city is inevitably stained with the peculiar sentiments of its population. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... bands of trading Navajos enlivened the days and I secured five good blankets in exchange for old Yawger, who was now about useless for our purposes. Prof. gave him to me to get what I could for him, and he also gave Clem another derelict for the same purpose. On the 9th of October Jack, Andy, and Clem, started with Jacob on his annual trip to the Mokis by way of Lee's Lonely Dell while Jones went north to Long Valley on the head of the Virgin, for topography. The Major on foot, with a Mormon companion and a ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... cable lengths out, as if those sheets of water had been violently churned. The site's exact bearings were taken, and the Moravian continued on course apparently undamaged. Had it run afoul of an underwater rock or the wreckage of some enormous derelict ship? They were unable to say. But when they examined its undersides in the service yard, they discovered that part of its keel had ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne



Words linked to "Derelict" :   abandoned ship, ship, remiss, negligent, run-down, delinquent, tatterdemalion, worn, damaged, dilapidated, broken-down, woebegone, uninhabited, flea-bitten, abandoned, tumble-down, deserted, ramshackle, neglectful



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