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relic
[ rel-ik ]
noun
- a surviving memorial of something past.
- an object having interest by reason of its age or its association with the past:
a museum of historic relics.
- a surviving trace of something:
a custom that is a relic of paganism.
- relics,
- remaining parts or fragments.
- the remains of a deceased person.
- something kept in remembrance; souvenir; memento.
- Ecclesiastical. (especially in the Roman Catholic and Greek churches) the body, a part of the body, or some personal memorial of a saint, martyr, or other sacred person, preserved as worthy of veneration.
- a once widespread linguistic form that survives in a limited area but is otherwise obsolete.
relic
/ ˈrɛlɪk /
noun
- something that has survived from the past, such as an object or custom
- something kept as a remembrance or treasured for its past associations; keepsake
- usually plural a remaining part or fragment
- RC Church Eastern Churches part of the body of a saint or something supposedly used by or associated with a saint, venerated as holy
- informal.an old or old-fashioned person or thing
- archaic.plural the remains of a dead person; corpse
- See relictecology a less common term for relict
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Other Words From
- relic·like adjective
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Word History and Origins
Origin of relic1
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Word History and Origins
Origin of relic1
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Example Sentences
Blues music is often treated like a museum piece, a relic from a bygone day, but this band will make you want to get up and dance.
Orphans is a true literary relic: a small shapely paperback that is tough to track down, thanks to a limited print run.
And then Further is gone, back on the road, like a time-traveling relic from another era or an apparition of Jerry Garcia.
Enjoy Messi while you can—he might play on for a few years yet but everything he represents is already a relic.
Marrero himself was hardly a “cup of coffee” relic or a minor character belatedly retrieved from the dustbin of baseball history.
No one who visits Salisbury will forget Stonehenge, the most remarkable relic of prehistoric man to be found in Britain.
A relic, saved no doubt from the wreck of the Abbaye de Chelles, stood like an ornament on the chimney-piece.
The Tuscan people set great store by the possession of this relic, and have engraved a representation of it upon their coins.
This is, perhaps, almost beneath the dignity of the love-story, but we have to regard it as a relic.
The Bourg is empty and dark, steeped in black shadows at the door of the chapel where the relic has been laid to rest.
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