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Dereliction   Listen
noun
Dereliction  n.  
1.
The act of leaving with an intention not to reclaim or resume; an utter forsaking abandonment. "Cession or dereliction, actual or tacit, of other powers."
2.
A neglect or omission as if by willful abandonment. "A total dereliction of military duties."
3.
The state of being left or abandoned.
4.
(Law) A retiring of the sea, occasioning a change of high-water mark, whereby land is gained.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dereliction" Quotes from Famous Books



... state of dereliction and despair did the General Election of 1895 surprise them. The Parnellites had their old organisation—the National League—and the Anti-Parnellites had established in opposition to this the National ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... with thinking more of his own particular greatness than of her honour and service, and then "digressing into old griefs," said the envoy, "too long and tedious to write." She vehemently denounced Davison also for dereliction of duty in not opposing the measure; but he manfully declared that he never deemed so meanly of her Majesty or of his Lordship as to suppose that she would send him, or that he would go to the Provinces, merely, "to take command of the relics of Mr. Norris's worn and decayed troops." Such ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... but I have scruples about visiting my own friends and letting you remain alone when Sir Charles is from home. It might appear a dereliction of duty—as though I took advantage of ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... of this regiment have deserted upon every occasion offered, the men generally being very inattentive. The commanding officer of "all that is left of them" was severely censured, the other day, for dereliction of duty. The General swore by the Eternal he wished the Colonel of the "1159th" would "go home and ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett

... regarding virtue as essential to true honor, did not consider great examples of valor, resource, and energy even of arousing and sustaining the military ardor of a country as an adequate counterpoise to a dereliction of principle and a compromising integrity." "How far a judicious policy and a pure patriotism were combined on this occasion," writes Sparks, "as to what extent party zeal contributed to warp the judgment, ...
— Colonel John Brown, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the Brave Accuser of Benedict Arnold • Archibald Murray Howe

... of Big Louie, she loved him more for the sorrow which he did not try to hide. From Fat Joe he had already learned of Big Louie's last dereliction. Out of a deeper silence, Steve spoke gravely—an epitaph for the man to whom ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... the censure which the Assembly and its advocates have attempted to cast on the acts of the Legislative Council. I have no hesitation in saying that many of the bills which it is most severely blamed for rejecting, were bills which it could not have passed without a dereliction of its duty to the constitution, the connexion with Great Britain, and the whole English population of the colony. If there is any censure to be passed on its general conduct, it is for having confined itself to the merely negative ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... avoided without excluding the States, in their political capacities, wholly from a place in the organization of the national government. If this had been done, it would doubtless have been interpreted into an entire dereliction of the federal principle; and would certainly have deprived the State governments of that absolute safeguard which they will enjoy under this provision. But however wise it may have been to have submitted in this instance to an inconvenience, for the attainment of ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... forgotten that the agent of a private company is also a representative of that larger and more powerful corporation which we call the state. The private company can do no more than outline his duty and discharge him for dereliction; the public corporation not only prescribes his duty but imprisons or hangs him for neglect; the private company is itself but a creation of the state which exercises over it autocratic power while shirking responsibility. If I loosen a rail on the "Katy" road and ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... dereliction of churchly care for the people of the Southern colonies, on the part of those who professed the main responsibility for it, the duty was undertaken, in the face of legal hindrances, by earnest Christians ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... far as Thompson's Pass, binding yourself to quit the State for three months and keep this matter a secret. Three of these gentlemen will go with you. They will point out to you your duty; their shotguns will apprise you of any dereliction from it. ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte

... their astonishment. The Council humbly considered His Excellency's acquiescence with the wishes of the Assembly to be an unequivocal abandonment of the "Rights" of the Legislative Council, and a fatal dereliction of the first principles of the constitution. And with regard to the income tax, proposed by the Assembly, Mr. Ryland states that the whole saving that would have been effected by it, would only have been L2,500 ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... revolution, in place of an entire empire in the enjoyment of uninterrupted repose. Had I connived at the views of the Anti-Imperial faction—even by avoiding the performance of extra-official services—I might, without dereliction of my duty as an officer, have amply shared in their favours; but for my adherence to the Emperor against their machinations, that influence was successfully used to deprive me even of the ordinary reward of my labours in the ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... guiltily and glance first aloft at the star, and then at the motionless figure of Ritson. This glance of inquiry showing that the star still occupied its proper position, and that the second mate had not observed his dereliction of duty, the eyelids again closed, and a longer period of forgetfulness would ensue, which of course ended, as it was sure to do, in the man falling soundly asleep as ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood

... simple in all her relations with her friend, and of course it was not simple so soon as she began to keep things back. She could at any rate keep back as little as possible, and she felt as if she were making up for a dereliction when she answered Olive's inquiry ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... had regarded her honor as lightly as Germany and felt that the matter of self-preservation would excuse any moral dereliction, she would have imitated the example of Luxemburg, also invaded, and permitted free passage to the German army without essential loss of her material prosperity, but with a fatal ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck

... offered by the cheapness of the Continent to large families with narrow incomes; but that the opulent should abandon their country, their natural station, and their duties, simply to drink champagne at a lower rate, and have cheaper dancing-masters, we must always regard as a scandalous dereliction of the services which every man of wealth and rank owes to his tenantry, his neighbours, and his nation. Of course, we except the traveller for curiosity; the man of science, whose object is to enlarge his knowledge; and even the man of rank, who desires to improve ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... grave disapproval that so promising and valuable a life should have been thus impiously removed from a sphere where both its own interests and—if I may say so—our interests so imperatively demanded its continuance. We should not—nay, we may not—countenance so grave a dereliction of all duty, both human ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... been rendered infamous by their conviction of great crimes, are deemed incompetent to give evidence. This rule has been adopted, because the commission of an infamous crime implies, as Sir William Scott has observed, "such a dereliction of moral principle on the part of the witness, as carries with it the conclusion that he would entirely disregard the obligation of an oath." Of such a witness it has been said, by another eminent judge,[102] that "the credit of ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... and restorative. I mention this unimportant incident chiefly because one of the charges brought against me afterwards was founded on "my having bribed my escort, and spent the whole night at the house of a notorious Secessionist." The poor sergeant was reduced to the ranks for dereliction of duty; and I the more regret this, because ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... pretty (oh, ever such a pretty!) widow by mistake. And continues by arrangement. Miss IRIS HOEY was really perfectly irresistible—something ought to be done about it. She would have reduced the whole Flying Corps to dereliction of duty. Mr. FRANK BAYLY had just that air of awkward modesty which is so much more effective than plain swank as an advertisement of gallantry, and Miss MURIEL POPE played a programme-girl with all the skill that an artist thinks is ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various

... garbled, and, as I thought, my views again misrepresented. More than this, the implied charge is published to the world that I am seeking to excite "dissension among the churches," and "opposition to the constituted authority of Synod."[1] It would therefore be great dereliction of duty to return to my field of labor, allowing my own views, and the views of my co-laborers, to be thus mistaken in the Church, and such serious charges against our course unanswered. I am not aware that any censorship of the press has been authorized by General ...
— History and Ecclesiastical Relations of the Churches of the Presbyterial Order at Amoy, China • J. V. N. Talmage

... believer can fall from grace by sinning, that he may sin and remain in a state of grace,—that is simply slander. Luther holds, indeed, that a person does not cease to be a Christian by every slip and fault, but he insists that no dereliction of duty, no deviation from the rule of godly living can be treated with indifference. It must be repented of, God's forgiveness must be sought, and only in this way will the Holy Spirit again be bestowed on the sinner. God ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... attack, the posting of the militia in advance of the main army, and the utter lack of scouts and runners, were all bad enough, but on the other hand, the delay and confusion in the quartermaster's department, the dereliction of the contractors, and the want of discipline among the militia and the levies, were all matters of extenuation. To win was hopeless. To unjustly denounce an old and worthy veteran of the Revolution, who acted with so much manly courage on the field of battle, ill becomes an ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... the lot of those whose cause they champion may be made merely endurable. Whenever the law is wilfully and successfully disregarded that a minority may be favored there will be found a means by which this dereliction is brought to the attention not only of the lawbreakers, but of the world, and as the latter, in all its divisions, contains lawbreakers who consider themselves above or beyond the law the punishment of one is usually followed ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various

... hard-earned shilling, that she had spoiled her own fortunes, and that she would, ere night, be called upon to abdicate her stool behind the counter in favour of that humble customer; and yet so it was. Mr Benjamin could not forgive her dereliction from honesty; and the more he had trusted her, the greater was the shock to his confidence. Moreover, his short-sighted views of human nature, and his incapacity for comprehending its infinite shades and varieties, caused him to extend his ill opinion farther ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various

... Thus did the beggarly government make money out of the small resources of those who, when the exchequer failed to fulfil its duties, endeavored themselves, as best they could, to make up for this dereliction. ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... useful property among those who were in want, burning and destroying all the rest with a cheerful alacrity which raised Alexander's spirits to the highest pitch. Yet Alexander was terrible and pitiless in all cases of dereliction of duty. He put to death Menander, one of his personal friends, because he did not remain in a fort, where he had been appointed to command the garrison; and he shot dead with his own hand Orsodates, a native chief who had revolted from him. At this time it happened that a ewe brought forth a ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... can I do?" says the judge, darting a glance sidewise at Caroline. "What you ask of me is a dereliction of duty, and I am a magistrate before ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... increased this timidity. Had they been without her, they would not have hesitated to take great risks, but, somehow or other, her life was inestimably precious in their eyes, and they would never have forgiven themselves had any ill befallen her through their dereliction ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis

... another foaming breaker, and again He sought solitude, and again He found tranquillity—and again returned to find the disciples asleep. 'They knew not what to answer Him' in extenuation of their renewed dereliction. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... have a somewhat different character. They are a departure from, a dereliction of his first principles. They are classical and courtly. They are polished in style, without being gaudy; dignified in subject, without affectation. They seem to have been composed not in a cottage ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... fairly intelligent, Miss Affleck, and anxious to do your best, you will do very well, I dare say. References are of little use to me; I prefer to use my own judgment. But you must understand clearly that for every dereliction there is a fine, which is deducted from the salary. A printed copy of the rules will be given you. And you may be discharged at a moment's ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... interpretation of the parable here. The doctrinal difficulty which some have met at this point, has been imported into the field by a mistake in regard to the material scene. The leaving of the ninety and nine in the wilderness, while the shepherd went out to seek the strayed sheep, implied no dereliction of the shepherd's duty,—no injury to the body of the flock. In this transaction neither kindness nor unkindness was manifested towards those that remained on the pasture;—it had no bearing upon them at all. Nor is it ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... wander in a maze of thoughts, cares, and affections; if I could be at leisure from the external things and creatures of this world, and chiefly from myself; if, in short, I might "come into a plenary dereliction of myself," I should at once "begin to see and know of the most present habitation of God in me and so I should eat of the Tree of Life in the midst of the Paradise, which Paradise I myself am, and be a Guest of God."[32] Adam, who was ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... opened her parasol, removed her duster, hid it under a bowlder, and with a few shivers and cat-like strokes of her soft hands not only obliterated all material traces of the stolen cream of Carquinez Woods, but assumed a feline demureness quite inconsistent with any moral dereliction. Unfortunately, she forgot to remove at the same time a certain ring from her third finger, which she had put on with her duster and had worn at no other time. With this slight exception, the benignant fate which always protected that young person brought her in contact with the Burnham girls at ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... who best understood the spirit of its institution, and who was destined to succeed him in his headship, a cold and terrible epistle. 'Reflect upon your conduct. Let me know whether you acknowledge your sin, and tell me at the same time what punishment you are ready to undergo for this dereliction of duty.' Lainez expressed immediate submission in the most abject terms; he was ready to resign his post, abstain from preaching, confine his studies to the Breviary, walk as a beggar to Rome, and there teach grammar to children, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... terms secured by Junot had infuriated England, and not only Dalrymple and Burrard, but Wellesley himself, had been recalled to give an account of their conduct. The last was triumphantly vindicated; but while the others were not convicted of dereliction in duty, they were virtually withdrawn from active life. Sir John Moore was now in command of the English troops in the Peninsula. He had been reinforced with ten thousand men, and feeling sure of Portugal, had advanced into Spain. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... Montmorency seemed to disconcert Madam d'Epinay; probably she did not expect it. My melancholy situation, the severity of the season, the general dereliction of me by my friends, all made her and Grimm believe, that by driving me to the last extremity, they should oblige me to implore mercy, and thus, by vile meanness, render myself contemptible, to be suffered to remain in an asylum which honor commanded me to leave. I left it so suddenly that they ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... haunted by the fear of recapture and death since the day when, in a mad fit of passion, he had, while ashore with a watering party, driven his cutlass through the body of a brutal petty officer who had threatened, for some trifling dereliction of duty, to get him ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke

... them as men, and who had not yet lost all affection to them as brethren, who also retained hopes that a happy reconciliation upon constitutional principles, without sacrificing the dignity or the just authority of government on the one side, or a dereliction of the rights of freemen on the other, was not even now impossible, notwithstanding their favourable dispositions in general, could not help feeling upon this occasion that the Americans sunk not a little in their estimation. It was not difficult to diffuse an opinion that the war in effect was ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... spirit of that signal in a profession where time is observed more strictly than in pugilism, where whatever one does one does in the white light of self-appointed publicity, where a single error or dereliction may ruin the prestige of years! Consider also the rank turpitude of such a lapse! Alas, women frequently do not consider these things. Some of them seem to have a superstition that a newspaper ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett

... of giving virtue to those who most scrupulously observe them? Do we not daily see persons who believe themselves damned if they forget a mass, if they eat a fowl on Friday, if they neglect a confession, though they are guilty at the same time of great dereliction to society? Do they not hold the conduct of those very unjust, and very cruel, who happen to have the misfortune of not thinking and doing as they think and act? These practices, out of which a great number of men have created essential duties, but too commonly ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... Assembly appointed to consider the status of the Sugar Act, favored the commission of Hutchinson as a special agent of the Colony to go to England and present the claims of the colonists, he was accused of inconsistency in opinion and action, and of dereliction of duty as the acknowledged leader of the patriotic party. Combined with the extraordinary appointment of Hutchinson, which however never took effect owing to the opposition of Governor Bernard, Otis was also charged with a too absolute recognition of the supremacy of Parliament in his pamphlet ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath

... the means by which she has produced the treaty are reflected on, a final compliance on our part while she still persists in that conduct, whilst the chastening rod of that nation is still held over us, is in my opinion a dereliction of national interest, of ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... of the incompatibility of the sections—from a party, which, having proved faithless to the obligation of the constitution in relation to the fugitive from service or labor, then declares null and void the law which their dereliction made it necessary for Congress to enact. The fealty of himself and friends to the constitution, and their honorable discharge of its obligations was their rebuke to this party, in whose hostility he found the highest commendation ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis

... no doubt that what Harlan feared would happen, had happened—that Deveny had come for Barbara. And Deveny had found her, through his dereliction. He had relaxed his vigilance for only a short time, and during ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer

... merit in suppressing the rebellion, his brother's jealousy, and the contempt he himself felt for the Prince, his own ill success in his battles abroad, and his father's treacherous sacrifice of him on the convention of Closterseven, the dereliction of his two political friends, Lord Holland and Lord Sandwich, and the rebuffing spite of the Princess-dowager; all those mortifications centring on a constitution evidently tending to dissolution, made him totally neglect himself, and ready to shake off being, as an encumbrance not worth the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... a forcible way, particularly when the form falls to pieces in the attempt to lift it from the table. Edward Wiebe says in his "Paradise of Childhood": "It was the one slat which, owing to its dereliction in performing its duty, destroyed the figure and prevented all the other slats from performing theirs." One experience of this kind will teach more than a thousand precepts. The geometrical forms learned in the sense-training lessons can be reproduced with the slats and will ...
— Hand-Loom Weaving - A Manual for School and Home • Mattie Phipps Todd

... this dereliction. Fidel Avila was living with a woman, by whom he had three children. The priest summoned ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... manufactured for myself a safeguard in the form of a letter to that gentleman, informing him of the important document which I held, and the danger in which it possibly stood from the family into whose toils I had now fallen? I could have cursed myself for my dereliction. ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green

... tyrannical, and oppressive," declared his belief "that one particle of compromise with that usurped power, or of concession to its pretensions, would be a heavy calamity to the people of the whole Union, and to none more than to the people of South Carolina themselves; that such concession would be a dereliction by Congress of their highest duties to their country, and directly lead to the final and irretrievable dissolution of ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... was at Kilkenny last year we went to see a nunnery, but could not converse with the sisters because they were in strict retreat. I was delighted with the red-nosed Padre, who showed us the place with a sort of proud, unctuous humiliation, and apparent dereliction of the world, that had to me the air of a complete Tartuffe; a strong, sanguine, square-shouldered son of the Church, whom a Protestant would be apt to warrant against any sufferings he was like to sustain by privation. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... temporary dereliction of their antipathy to the sea, and intercourse with foreigners, the Egyptians can scarcely be regarded as a nation distinguished for their maritime and commercial enterprises; and they certainly by no means, either by sea or land, took advantages of those favourable circumstances ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... unfortunately within the pale of human nature. I have endeavoured, however, to soften the character, as it is depicted, from that of an utterly abandoned libertine into a man of extraordinary ambition; for great passions, though they cannot palliate crime, are nevertheless not inconsistent with a dereliction ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... flog, men of the gunbearer class. They respect themselves and their calling, and would never stand that sort of punishment. When one blunders, a sarcastic scolding is generally sufficient; a more serious fault may be punished on the spot by the white man's fist; or a really bad dereliction may cause the man's instant degradation from the post. With this in mind we had called the council ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... chiefs are seldom men of virtuous act or intent, they are high in their appreciation of, and just in their rewards to those whose lives are patterns of honor and chastity. The Indian woman, concerning whom no truthful tale of dereliction can be told, when she arrives at the requisite age, is invested with great power in her tribe. One of their ancient customs, well authenticated, was to honor the virtuous women of their tribe with sacred titles, investing them, in their blind ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... about 1650 the sight of the left eye was gone. He was warned by his doctor that if he persisted in using the remaining eye for book-work, he would lose that too. "The choice lay before me," Milton writes in the Second Defence, "between dereliction of a supreme duty and loss of eyesight; in such a case I could not listen to the physician, not if Aesculapius himself had spoken from his sanctuary; I could not but obey that inward monitor, I know not what, that spake to me from heaven. I considered with ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... it is considered, that they were, mostly, men from the humble walks of life; comparatively illiterate and unrefined; without civil or religious institutions, and with a love of liberty, bordering on its extreme; their more enlightened descendants can not but feel surprise, that their dereliction from propriety had not been ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... the soldiers, to witness the negroes scouring the streets in all directions, to get to their places of abode, many of them in great trepidation, uttering ejaculations of terror as they ran. This was an inexorable law, and punishment or fine was sure to follow its dereliction, no excuse being available, and as the owners seldom submitted to pay the fine, the slaves were compelled to take the consequences, which, in the language that consigned them to the cruel infliction, "consisted of from ten to twenty ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... ability, as was to have been expected, and did, I believe, everything that it was possible for them to do in the circumstances. If I have taken the task out of their hands, it has not been because of any dereliction or failure on their part but only because there were some things which the Government can do and private management cannot. We shall continue to value most highly the advice and assistance of these gentlemen and I am sure we shall ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson

... obliged her to overlook this inconsistency; and as demonstrations cost her little, she not only indicted on the occasion a solemn letter of reproof to her ally, but actually professed herself so deeply wounded by his dereliction of principle, that it was necessary for her to tranquillize her mind by the perusal of many pious works, and the study of Boethius on consolation, which she even undertook the task of translating. Essex, whom she honored with ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... maids. He extracted from me a written promise that I would translate and meditate upon a portion of the Greek text every morning before I started for business. This promise I presently failed to keep, my good intentions being undermined by an invincible ennui; I concealed the dereliction from him, and the sense that I was deceiving my Father ate into my conscience like a canker. But the dilemma was now before me that I must either deceive my Father in such things or paralyse ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... Constantinople. But Britain's ironclads, Austria's legions, and German diplomacy barred the way in the very hour of triumph; and Russia drew back. To the Slav enthusiasts of Moscow even the Treaty of San Stefano had seemed a dereliction of a sacred duty; that of Berlin seemed the most cowardly of betrayals. As the Princess Radziwill confesses in her Recollections—that ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... President with communications asking the same leniency for Hicks. So certain was I that Lincoln had or would reprieve Hicks that I failed to have him shot on the day named. Some officious persons reported my dereliction to Meade, who thereupon (with some censure) ordered me to shoot Hicks on the next day, and to report in person the fact of the shooting. This order I was obliged to obey. The brigade was drawn up on three sides of a square, with ranks opened facing ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... freely given to and duly heeded by a girl deprived of her natural advisers in parents, is a reasonable and honourable supposition; but to imply that the most influential adviser of a young lady so situated is a young single man, in no way related to her, appears to me a dereliction of that regard to the dignity of her sex which is the chivalrous characteristic of your countrymen—and to Mademoiselle Cicogna herself, a surmise which she would be justified in resenting as ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... interview with Mr. Meredith which proved something of a shock to that abstracted gentleman. She pointed out to him, none too respectfully, his dereliction of duty in allowing a waif like Mary Vance to come into his family and associate with his children without knowing or learning ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... the distance. As he went, he asked himself two questions: Could he fail to deliver the package according to instructions, and yet earn his money? And was there any way of so delivering it without risk to the recipient or dereliction of duty to the man who had intrusted it to him and whose money he wished to earn? To the first question his conscience at once answered no; to the second the reply came more slowly, and before fixing ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green

... weak, trampled-upon women? Lady Straitlace may do what she likes: she assumes a severe air in society, is strict with her children, and harsh with her servants. In all ranks of her acquaintance (of course below that of a countess) she visits the slightest dereliction from female propriety with unrelenting bitterness. Woe be to the trespasser, high or low! The weapon is always ready to probe and gash and lacerate; the lash is constantly raised, "swift to smite and never to spare." ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... the princes of Wei," he said, "that the governor of a place which has held out for a hundred days, and then, seeing no prospect of relief, surrenders, shall not be held guilty of dereliction of duty." ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... enjoy this cruel luxury of self-mortification, and his horses' heads were turned to Richmond when within a stage of London. He had spent two days with the good old man, and those two days had so warmed and softened his feelings that he was quite appalled at his own dereliction from fixed principles! However, he went before Cleveland had time to discover that he was changed; and the old man had promised ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... obtained." It would have been a piece of audacity of quite superb coolness for the French diplomatist to ask for British protection for ships on ostensible grounds of research, had their secret purpose been exactly opposite to the profession; and the British Minister would have been guilty of grave dereliction of duty had he not assured himself that ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott

... was known to be such a determined hater of the English, else might his life have been the forfeit of this seeming act of treachery. But he meditated no such dereliction of duty. Perfectly aware of the impossiblity of preventing his men from firing, did they possess the means, this deliberate and calculating personage had resorted to this expedient to reserve his own effort, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... ridden that way in the flush of his youth and hopefulness. The girl-sweetheart he was then going to rejoin was now the wife of another; the woman who had been her guardian was now his own wife. He had accepted without a pang the young girl's dereliction, but it was through her revelation that he was now about to confront the dereliction of his own wife. And this was the reward of his youthful trust and loyalty! A bitter laugh broke from his lips. It was part of his still youthful self-delusion ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte

... you exceedingly lax, Captain Bezan, as it regards the exercise of your duty and command. You will report yourself to me, after morning parade, for such orders as shall be deemed proper for you under the circumstances, as a public reproof for dereliction ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray

... the railways had made out their case, and recommended that the right of the companies to station terminals should be recognised by Parliament. Further, the committee, on the whole of the evidence, acquitted the railway companies of any grave dereliction of their duty to the public, and added: "It is remarkable that no witnesses have appeared to complain of 'preferences' given to individuals by railway companies as acts of private favour or partiality." As to passenger ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow

... invasion and against domestic violence, whenever application shall have been made by the Legislature, or by the Executive when the Legislature can not be convened; and that to fail to give protection against any invasion whatsoever would be a dereliction of duty. To add that there could be no justification for the invasion of a State by an army of the United States, is but to repeat what has been said, on the absence of any authority in the General Government ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... is, and always has been—except, perhaps, among the Jews, in the earliest periods of the history of that wonderful nation—a strange disposition to overlook the happiness of the young. It is not necessary to represent this dereliction as peculiar to modern times, for we find traces of the same thing thousands of ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott

... it really was, a reasonable compensation offered by Congress, at a time when they had nothing else to give to officers of the army, for services then to be performed. It was the only means to prevent a total dereliction of the service. It was a part of their hire; I may be allowed to say, it was the price of their blood, and of your independency. It is therefore more than a common debt; it is a debt of honor: it can never be considered as a pension, or gratuity, nor cancelled ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... railway employee whose mind was overthrown by his disastrous error in misplacing a switch, and who spent his days in the mad-house repeating the phrase: "If I only had, if I only had." His was not an intentional or wilful dereliction. But in the hearts of how many repentant sinners does there not echo through life a similar mournful refrain. This lesson has been taught by Zola in more than ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... desertion, relinquishment, dereliction, reprobation, surrender, evacuation, rejection, abdication. Antonyms: retention, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... with us should we tend— Presuming as Thy favoured Race, All flushed to own so great a Friend— To dereliction into grace! Deal gently with us, Lord, should we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various

... disaster from material issues compel. With the Republican party (as of a Christmas morning) "everything is lovely and the goose hangs high;" but discomfiture, sometimes laggard, is ever attendant on dereliction of duty. This usurpation, which should have been throttled when a babe, has now become a giant seated in its castle, compelling deference and acquiescence to an anomaly, reaching beyond the Negro in its menace ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... incarnation of a dozen bucko mates. In that wild weather at the southern end of the earth, Joshua Higgins ceased washing. His grimy face usually robbed George Dorety of what little appetite he managed to accumulate. Ordinarily this lavatorial dereliction would have caught Captain Cullen's eye and vocabulary, but in the present his mind was filled with making westing, to the exclusion of all other things not contributory thereto. Whether the mate's face was clean or dirty had no bearing upon westing. Later on, when 50 degrees ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London

... tolerably satisfactory relations with the adjacent village; but Anton's calm decision had at all events prevented any outbreak of opposition. One of his first measures had been to appeal, in all cases of breach of trust or dereliction of duty, to the proper authorities. Karl's cavalry cloak attracted a few men who had served; and through these, the most civilized part of the community, the settlers gained some influence over others. At length, several voluntarily offered to become servants ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... are nothing but "garbage." To write his Defence of the English People Milton deliberately sacrificed his eyesight, his doctor having warned him that he would lose his one remaining eye if he persisted in using it for book work. "The choice lay before me," he says, "between dereliction of a supreme duty and loss of eyesight. In such a case I could not listen to the physician, not if AEsculapius himself had spoken from his sanctuary; I could not but obey that inward monitor, I know not what, that spoke to me from Heaven. I considered with ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... it ought to be exploded for ever; that provision should be viewed, as it really was, a reasonable compensation offered by Congress, at a time when they had nothing else to give to officers of the army, for services then to be performed: it was the only means to prevent a total dereliction of the service; it was a part of their hire. I may be allowed to say, it was the price of their blood, and of your independency; it is, therefore, more than a common debt, it is a debt of honor; it can never be considered as a pension or gratuity, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... "alarming extent." An Act was therefore passed to ensure the more effectual prevention of this crime, and once again the Revenue officers were exhorted to perform their duty to its fullest extent, and were threatened with punishment in case of any dereliction in this respect, while rewards were held out as an inducement to zealous action. Under this new Act powers were given to the Army, Navy, Marines, and Militia to work in concert with each other for the purpose of preventing ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton

... company he found himself again. Their friendship weaned him by degrees from the jaundiced view of life which Margaret's dereliction had induced. They drew him, in time, from his brooding melancholy, and through the upbuilding of the body restored ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

... kept his silver was a good deal lighter, and that of the watcher a good deal heavier, when the twain parted. And therein the old gentleman sinned doubly; for himself he broke the law, and he put temptation in the way of the watcher, and caused him also to sin and to be guilty of grave dereliction of duty. Yet there it was! The most rigid of his kind in pursuit of virtue and in observance of the law, saw "a fish"—and straightway, irresistibly the old Adam moved within him. Nay! Under certain circumstances hardly would one trust even a black-coated Border minister if a salmon provoked him ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... necessary to escape the vigilant eyes of Wallace, which seemed to be present in every part of the kingdom at once. So careful was he, in overlooking, by his well-chosen officers, civil and military, every transaction, that the slightest dereliction from the straight order of things was immediately seen and examined into. Many of these trusty magistrates having been placed in the Lothians, before March took the government, he could not now remove them without exciting suspicion; and therefore, as they remained, great ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... unfold its infant spirit,—never supplies it with spiritual food, nor directs its soul to the eternal world! In the same way the pious wife neglects her impenitent husband; and the pious husband, his reckless wife. There is too much such dereliction of duty in the homes ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... against its mode of procedure. "I have strenuously endeavoured," he wrote on the 18th of December, "to avoid laying before you any complaint, more particularly concerning acts done by your excellencies; but there is a point at which such forbearance on my part would become a dereliction of my duty as an officer in the service of Greece, amounting even to treason against the State. So long as the evils extended no further than the depriving the ships-of-war of their crews, and preventing ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane

... Some cutting little sarcasms of Molly Gaverick's had likewise annoyed her, and she fretted under the miserable sense of her inadequacy to the demands of a world she despised and yet hankered after. Then Sir Luke had been tiresomely pertinacious over some small dereliction on Bridget's part from the canons of Government House etiquette, which he had requested should not be repeated. Rosamond Tallant had been tiresome also and had made her feel that even here she was no more than a dependent who must conform to the wills of her official superiors. Joan ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... The time is past! Every voice cries, Away! 5 Tempt not with one last tear thy friend's ungentle mood: Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy stay: Duty and dereliction guide thee ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... anti-Austrian movement, and nothing in Lord Minto's mission can prevent our endeavouring to facilitate and forward a speedy settlement of the present Italian difference.[31] If, therefore, the Italians should be inclined to be moderate, there can be no dereliction of principle in encouraging them to be so. The danger of French interference increases with the delay and is equally great, whether the Austrians maintain themselves in the Venetian Territory or whether Charles Albert unite it to his proposed kingdom of Northern Italy; indeed, the French seem to ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... "to arrest on suspicion." No citizen may be arrested under the statutes unless a crime has actually been committed. Thus, the police regulations deliberately compel every officer either to violate the law or to be made the subject of charges for dereliction of duty. A confusing state of things, truly, to a man who wants to do his duty by himself ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... taken them on a Sunday. But we were never more mistaken in our lives. My father went into the cellar for some purpose in the evening, after his return from meeting, and discovered the trout. An inquiry was instituted, our dereliction was exposed, and we were promised a flogging. Now that was a promise, which, while it was rarely made, was never broken. When my father in his calm, quiet way, made up his mind and so expressed it, that he owed one of his boys a flogging, it became, as it were, a ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond

... Horton," the admiral said. "Captain Walsham is not your accuser. Nay, more, he has himself committed a grave dereliction of duty in trying to screen you, and by endeavouring to destroy the principal evidence against you. Mr. Middleton overheard a conversation between the Canadian pilot and the French general, and the former described how he had been liberated by an English officer, who assisted him to escape ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty

... moderne," like the Americans. The Americans conceive of the executive as one of their appointed agents; when it intervenes in common life, it does so, they consider, in virtue of the mandate of the sovereign people, and there is no invasion or dereliction of freedom in that people interfering with itself. The French, the Swiss, and all nations who breathe the full atmosphere of the nineteenth century, think so too. The material necessities of this age require a strong executive; a ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... in such cases, even if it be final, does not necessarily involve the ruin of the unsuccessful commander. He may negotiate an honorable peace, and return to his own land in safety; and, if his misfortunes are considered by his countrymen as owing not to any dereliction from his duty as a soldier, but to the influence of adverse circumstances which no human skill or resolution could have controlled, he may spend the remainder of his days in prosperity and honor. The contest, however, between Caesar and Pompey was not of this character. One ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott

... appointed to superintend the business, at a salary of $1000 a year and his travelling expenses; contracts are made or to be made, mails carried, postmasters appointed and paid. This is doubtless a very proper and necessary thing, one which the government could not have omitted without a plain dereliction of duty. The honor and interest of the nation required that as soon as the title to the country was settled, our citizens who were resident there, and those who shall go to settle there, should enjoy the benefits of the mail. And as it was the nation's business to ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt

... inseparably connected with the constitution of all city- states; while, on the other hand, he must stimulate men to unity, friendship, and eagerness to perform their duty. All these things I have done, and no one can discover any dereliction of duty on my part at any time. {247} If one were to ask any person whatever, by what means Philip had accomplished the majority of his successes, every one would reply that it was by means of his army, and by giving presents and corrupting those in charge of affairs. Now I had no ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes



Words linked to "Dereliction" :   delinquency, misconduct, willful neglect, actus reus, neglectfulness, negligence, carelessness, wrongdoing, wrongful conduct, nonperformance, neglect, nonfeasance



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