Abandoned

How to spell abandoned

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce abandoned

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does abandoned mean?

1. adjectiveLeft empty, deserted, or no longer used or maintained.
2. verbPast tense and past participle of abandon: to have given up or deserted completely.

Abandoned in a sentence

• adjective

  The surveyors found an abandoned warehouse at the edge of the docks.

• verb

  The crew abandoned the sinking ferry within minutes.

• adjective

  An abandoned shopping trolley had been left in the car park.

• verb

  Management abandoned the project after the budget was cut.

Where does abandoned come from?

Language of origin: French

This word descends from the Old French phrase 'mettre a bandon', meaning to put something under someone's control or jurisdiction, and so to leave it entirely at another's disposal. The noun 'bandon' meant power or authority and traced back to a Frankish Germanic root related to 'ban', a public proclamation or command. When the verb 'abandon' entered Middle English in the late 1300s, it carried the sense of surrendering something completely, which slid easily into the modern meaning of deserting or giving up. The participle form 'abandoned' then came to describe both a place left empty and, more colourfully, a person given over to wild or unrestrained behaviour. A useful memory aid is that the spelling keeps a single 'b' and a single 'n' before the doubled 'n' of the ending, so it is 'a-ban-doned', not 'abbandonned'.

How the word is built

• a- (intensive, from Latin ad)
• bandon (control, jurisdiction)
• -ed (past participle/adjective suffix)