relic
/ˈɹɛlɪk/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.37 in modern English
7
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Pertaining to the Big Bang.
Example Sentences
- "[…] let him not ask our pardon; The nature of his great offence is dead, And deeper than oblivion we do bury The incensing relics of it […]"
- "Though a Cup of cold water from ſome hand may not be without it's reward, yet ſtick not thou for Wine and Oyl for the Wounds of the Distreſſed, and treat the poor, as our Saviour did the Multitude, to the reliques of ſome baskets."
- "1797, Ann Radcliffe, The Italian, London: T. Cadell Jun. & W. Davies, Volume 2, Chapter 6, p. 184, It appeared, from […] the ruins scattered distantly along its skirts, to be a part of the city entirely abandoned by the modern inhabitants to the reliques of its former grandeur."
- "She exerted the last relics of her wasted strength to gain a prominent position upon a ledge of the rocks behind her […]"
- "[T]hey know that the low social level of the mass of the race is responsible for much discrimination against it, but they also know, and the nation knows, that relentless color-prejudice is more often a cause than a result of the Negro’s degradation; they seek the abatement of this relic of barbarism, and not its systematic encouragement and pampering by all agencies of social power from the Associated Press to the Church of Christ."
- "[…] the imperfect light entering by their narrow casements showed bedsteads of a hundred years old; chests in oak or walnut, looking, with their strange carvings of palm branches and cherubs’ heads, like types of the Hebrew ark; rows of venerable chairs, high-backed and narrow; stools still more antiquated, on whose cushioned tops were yet apparent traces of half-effaced embroideries, wrought by fingers that for two generations had been coffin-dust. All these relics gave to the third storey of Thornfield Hall the aspect of a home of the past: a shrine of memory."
Etymology
From Middle English relik et al., from Old French relique, from Latin reliquiae (“remains, relics”), from relinquō (“to leave behind, abandon, relinquish”), from re- + linquō (“to leave, quit, forsake, depart from”). Doublet of relict, derelict, and relinquish.