Emily Dickinson Lexicon

AB'DI-CATE, v.t. [L. abdico; ab and dico, to dedicate, to bestow; but the literal primary sense of dico, is to send or thrust.]

1. In a general sense, to relinquish, renounce or abandon. – Punter.
2. To abandon an office or trust, without a formal resignation to those who conferred it, or without their consent; also to abandon a throne, without a formal surrender of the crown. – Case of King James, Blackstone.
3. To relinquish an office before the expiration of the time of service. Case of Diocletian, Gibbon; also Case of Paul III, Coxe's Russ.
4. To reject; to renounce; to abandon as a right. – Burke.
5. To cast away; to renounce; as, to abdicate our mental faculties. [Unusual.] – J. P. Smith.
6. In the civil law, to disclaim a son and expel him from the family, as a father; to disinherit during the life of the father. – Encyc.