Abandon

How to spell abandon

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce abandon

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does abandon mean?

1. verbTo leave behind, give up, or desert something or someone completely.
2. nounComplete lack of inhibition or restraint in one's behaviour.

Abandon in a sentence

• verb

  The crew had to abandon the sinking ferry within minutes.

• noun

  The children danced around the garden with sheer abandon.

• verb

  Rising costs forced the company to abandon the expansion plan.

• noun

  He spent his savings with a reckless abandon that worried his family.

Where does abandon come from?

Language of origin: French

This word came into English in the late 1300s from the Old French verb 'abandoner', which meant to surrender something or hand it over completely. That verb was built from the phrase 'a bandon', literally 'into the control of', where 'bandon' meant power, jurisdiction, or authority and traced back to a Late Latin word for a proclamation or command. The original idea was therefore not careless desertion but the opposite: to place a thing entirely under another's control, to give it up to someone else's power. Over time the sense slid from formally surrendering something to simply forsaking or deserting it, which is the dominant meaning today. The noun sense, as in doing something 'with wild abandon', preserves a related thread: the speaker has given up all restraint. The single 'b', single 'd', and single 'n' between the vowels are the quiet spelling trap, since nothing in the word is doubled despite its rhythm tempting some writers.

How the word is built

• a- (from Old French 'à': to, into)
• bandon (control, jurisdiction, power)