1. A person who is abandoned by society; especially, a person without a permanent home and means of support; a vagrant; a homeless person, a bum.
2. A vessel (a boat or a ship) abandoned in open water by its officers and crew without any hope or intention of returning to it; a ship abandoned on the high seas.
3. Personal property abandoned or thrown away by the owner.
4. Someone who is guilty of neglect of duty: A human derelict is someone who by reason of his/her actions, etc., has been abandoned by respectable people.
5. Etymology: from Latin derelictus, "solitary, deserted"; the past participle of dereliquere. "to abandon, to forsake, to desert"; from de-, "entirely" + relinquere, "to leave behind".

1. A reference to someone who fails to do what should be done: The police officer was charged with being derelict in his duty when he failed to arrest a man for mistreating his wife.
2. Descriptive of a person who does not take care of another individual: The derelict husband neglected to wake up his wife so she could get ready for work in time. © ALL rights are reserved.

Go to this Word A Day Revisited Index
so you can see more of Mickey Bach's cartoons.