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Dereliction   /dˌɛrəlˈɪkʃən/   Listen
Dereliction

noun
1.
A tendency to be negligent and uncaring.  Synonyms: delinquency, willful neglect.  "His derelictions were not really intended as crimes" , "His adolescent protest consisted of willful neglect of all his responsibilities"
2.
Willful negligence.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Dereliction" Quotes from Famous Books



... Mary her quart of meal and the change for her hard-earned shilling, that she had spoiled her own fortunes, and that she would, ere night, be called upon to abdicate her stool behind the counter in favour of that humble customer; and yet so it was. Mr Benjamin could not forgive her dereliction from honesty; and the more he had trusted her, the greater was the shock to his confidence. Moreover, his short-sighted views of human nature, and his incapacity for comprehending its infinite ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various

... punished for being a co-partner in his innocence. It should not be forgotten that the agent of a private company is also a representative of that larger and more powerful corporation which we call the state. The private company can do no more than outline his duty and discharge him for dereliction; the public corporation not only prescribes his duty but imprisons or hangs him for neglect; the private company is itself but a creation of the state which exercises over it autocratic power while shirking responsibility. If I loosen a rail on the "Katy" road ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... heart did not ache one-half so hard as on that terrible day of her bridal. In the railway car, on the crowded steamboat, or at the large hotels, where all were entire strangers, she forgot to watch and criticise her husband, and if any dereliction from etiquette did occur, he yielded so readily to her suggestion that to him seemed an easy task. The habits of years, however, are not so easily broken, and by the time Saratoga was reached, Richard's patience began to give ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... with narrow incomes; but that the opulent should abandon their country, their natural station, and their duties, simply to drink champagne at a lower rate, and have cheaper dancing-masters, we must always regard as a scandalous dereliction of the services which every man of wealth and rank owes to his tenantry, his neighbours, and his nation. Of course, we except the traveller for curiosity; the man of science, whose object is to enlarge his knowledge; and even the man of rank, who ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... peculiar and imperative circumstances a forbearance on the part of the United States to occupy the territory in question, and thereby guard against the confusions and contingencies which threaten it, might be construed into a dereliction of their title or an insensibility to the importance of the stake; considering that in the hands of the United States it will not cease to be a subject of fair and friendly negotiation and adjustment; ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson

... been—except, perhaps, among the Jews, in the earliest periods of the history of that wonderful nation—a strange disposition to overlook the happiness of the young. It is not necessary to represent this dereliction as peculiar to modern times, for we find traces of the same ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott

... said. "I shall not write to him. If you are fairly intelligent, Miss Affleck, and anxious to do your best, you will do very well, I dare say. References are of little use to me; I prefer to use my own judgment. But you must understand clearly that for every dereliction there is a fine, which is deducted from the salary. A printed copy of the rules will be given you. And you may be discharged at a moment's ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... its widest sense denotes any kind of omission; but sometimes it is taken strictly for the omission of something concerning God, or for a man's intentional and as it were contemptuous dereliction of duty: and then it has a certain gravity, for which reason it ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... of the sun. She had not, however, travelled far up the sky, on the forbidden road, before the circumstance was discovered by the sun, who immediately hastened to her in his anger, and punished her dereliction by clothing her in darkness, forcing her back to her own territories, and forbidding her to shed her light upon the earth. This story, whimsical as it may seem, was received with implicit confidence in its truth by the king and queen and most of the people of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various

... increased wealth and from his spending the irregularly acquired possessions in a seemly manner. A well-bred expenditure of his booty especially appeals with great effect to persons of a cultivated sense of the proprieties, and goes far to mitigate the sense of moral turpitude with which his dereliction is viewed by them. It may be noted also—and it is more immediately to the point—that we are all inclined to condone an offense against property in the case of a man whose motive is the worthy one of providing ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... from the South till disaster from material issues compel. With the Republican party (as of a Christmas morning) "everything is lovely and the goose hangs high;" but discomfiture, sometimes laggard, is ever attendant on dereliction of duty. This usurpation, which should have been throttled when a babe, has now become a giant seated in its castle, compelling deference and acquiescence to an anomaly, reaching beyond the Negro in ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... moderator, "I solemnly call you to account as the moderator of this synod of the only true and protesting Kirk of Scotland, for the gravest dereliction of your duty. I summon you to declare the cause why Ralph Peden, student in divinity, left your house at midnight, and, returning to mine, was for that cause denied bed and board at his ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... and eat him myself would give me strength to hunt for more. A strong inward feeling remonstrated against such an invasion of the rights of my starving messmates; but if, by fortifying myself, I gained ability to procure something more substantial than a teal duck, my dereliction would be sufficiently atoned for, and my overruling appetite at the ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... a pretty (oh, ever such a pretty!) widow by mistake. And continues by arrangement. Miss IRIS HOEY was really perfectly irresistible—something ought to be done about it. She would have reduced the whole Flying Corps to dereliction of duty. Mr. FRANK BAYLY had just that air of awkward modesty which is so much more effective than plain swank as an advertisement of gallantry, and Miss MURIEL POPE played a programme-girl with all the skill that an artist thinks is worth ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various

... nature. I have endeavoured, however, to soften the character, as it is depicted, from that of an utterly abandoned libertine into a man of extraordinary ambition; for great passions, though they cannot palliate crime, are nevertheless not inconsistent with a dereliction of moral ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... if no other merit. I had really no wish to conceal anything except the fact that I had not, in my utter helplessness, even tried to get Miss Gage any other partners. But in the larger interest of the present situation, Mrs. March seemed to have lost the sense of my dereliction in this respect. She merely asked, "And it was after you went back to the parlour, just before you came home, that you wrote those names ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... historical facts. All at which an English woman would have smiled, appalled the tender but superstitious Neapolitan; and when the priest left her, with solemn rebukes and grave accusations of a dereliction of her duties to her child, if she hesitated to fly with it from an abode polluted by the darker powers and unhallowed arts, Viola, still clinging to the image of Zanoni, sank into a passive lethargy which held ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... most difficult matter had been to establish tolerably satisfactory relations with the adjacent village; but Anton's calm decision had at all events prevented any outbreak of opposition. One of his first measures had been to appeal, in all cases of breach of trust or dereliction of duty, to the proper authorities. Karl's cavalry cloak attracted a few men who had served; and through these, the most civilized part of the community, the settlers gained some influence over others. At length, several voluntarily offered to become servants at the castle, or day-laborers ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... philosophic productions have a somewhat different character. They are a departure from, a dereliction of his first principles. They are classical and courtly. They are polished in style, without being gaudy; dignified in subject, without affectation. They seem to have been composed not in a cottage at Grasmere, but among the half-inspired groves and stately recollections of Cole-Orton. We might allude ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... exposed to constant peril from fire. Now it seems plain that here is an occasion for the interposition of municipal authority. In spite of the jealousy (proper within certain limits) with which governmental interference with private property is regarded in this country, it is a manifest dereliction of duty on the part of our city authorities not to exercise a strict supervision over these houses. The interests which are chiefly affected by their condition are not private, but public interests. There are legal means ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... affection to them as brethren, who also retained hopes that a happy reconciliation upon constitutional principles, without sacrificing the dignity or the just authority of government on the one side, or a dereliction of the rights of freemen on the other, was not even now impossible, notwithstanding their favourable dispositions in general, could not help feeling upon this occasion that the Americans sunk not a little ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... multiply it, in the view of the enemy; and immediately to strike at all other parties preparing to join them. Had parties from the country been suffered to incorporate with the British, and to unite in their principles and views, the sense of a dereliction of duty, and the punishment expected to await it, as well as the pride of opinion, usually attending a new conversion, might have kept them firm in their apostacy. Of a truth, Gen. Marion made many converts to the cause of ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James

... do?" says the judge, darting a glance sidewise at Caroline. "What you ask of me is a dereliction of duty, and I am a magistrate before I ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac

... has an excellent protest against 'the dereliction of principle shown in supposing that any "Cause" can be of so much importance as fidelity to truth, or can be important at all otherwise than in its relation to truth which wants vindicating. It reminds me of an incident which happened when I was ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... was glad of the chance. She wanted to be very simple in all her relations with her friend, and of course it was not simple so soon as she began to keep things back. She could at any rate keep back as little as possible, and she felt as if she were making up for a dereliction when she ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... The Department of the Seine, presided by La Rochefoucauld, tried to assert its constitutional authority over the great city situated within its limits. It voted the suspension of Petion, mayor of Paris, and of Manuel, his procureur, for dereliction of duty in failing to maintain order on the 20th ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... been rendered infamous by their conviction of great crimes, are deemed incompetent to give evidence. This rule has been adopted, because the commission of an infamous crime implies, as Sir William Scott has observed, "such a dereliction of moral principle on the part of the witness, as carries with it the conclusion that he would entirely disregard the obligation of an oath." Of such a witness it has been said, by another eminent judge,[102] ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... reminded of his dereliction, "say, how did she happen to go? And I want to get her address so I can explain how it happened—I wouldn't have missed seeing her ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge

... spell," replied Pascal. "This sacrifice of his nephew will confirm it with my countrymen, as well as with yours, for ever. These thirteen others—for he has sacrificed thirteen of the soldiers, for dereliction of duty in the late rising—these thirteen are from the garrison of Cap, chiefly, though it is said two or three are from Limbe. All the soldiery from these two places, and from Port Dauphin, are upon the Place. ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... sentence likewise commuted, and I tried to reach the President with communications asking the same leniency for Hicks. So certain was I that Lincoln had or would reprieve Hicks that I failed to have him shot on the day named. Some officious persons reported my dereliction to Meade, who thereupon (with some censure) ordered me to shoot Hicks on the next day, and to report in person the fact of the shooting. This order I was obliged to obey. The brigade was drawn up on three sides of a square, with ranks opened facing ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... As he went, he asked himself two questions: Could he fail to deliver the package according to instructions, and yet earn his money? And was there any way of so delivering it without risk to the recipient or dereliction of duty to the man who had intrusted it to him and whose money he wished to earn? To the first question his conscience at once answered no; to the second the reply came more slowly, and before fixing his mind determinedly upon it he asked himself why he felt that this was no ordinary commission. ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green

... again; To the last farthing would he rack and strain. For stinted tithes, or stinted offering, He made the people piteously to sing. He left no leg for the good bishop's crook; Down went the black sheep in his own black book; For when the name gat there, such dereliction Came, you must know, sirs, in ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... being corrected by Madame Rupprecht, or reproved in a delicate, complimentary way by Monsieur de la Tourelle. One day I said to my father that I did not want to be married, that I would rather go back to the dear old mill; but he seemed to feel this speech of mine as a dereliction of duty as great as if I had committed perjury; as if, after the ceremony of betrothal, no one had any right over me but my future husband. And yet he asked me some solemn questions; but my answers were not such as to do ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell

... a cosmical ring? The prospect, indeed, of all but a select few of the asteroids being thrown back by their contemptuous captors into the sea of space seemed so imminent that Professor Watson provided by will against the dereliction of the twenty-two discovered by himself. But the fortunes of the whole family improved through the distinction obtained by one of them. On August 14, 1898, the trail of a rapidly-moving, star-like object of the ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... a long silence. Mrs. Thropp pondered bitterly. She was the most moral of women. She had brought up her children with all rigidity. She had abused them for the least dereliction. She had upheld the grimmest standard of virtue, with "Don't!" for its watchword. Of virtue as a warm-hearted, alert, eager, glowing spirit, cultivating the best and most beautiful things in life, she had no idea. Virtue ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... the first time he had ridden that way in the flush of his youth and hopefulness. The girl-sweetheart he was then going to rejoin was now the wife of another; the woman who had been her guardian was now his own wife. He had accepted without a pang the young girl's dereliction, but it was through her revelation that he was now about to confront the dereliction of his own wife. And this was the reward of his youthful trust and loyalty! A bitter laugh broke from his lips. It was part of his still ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte

... little pause ensued). "One trims the bark 'twixt shoal and shelf, "And sees, each side, the good effects of it, "A value for religion's self, "A carelessness about the sects of it. "Let me enjoy my own conviction, "Not watch my neighbour's faith with fretfulness, "Still spying there some dereliction "Of truth, perversity, forgetfulness!" Better a mild indifferentism, "Teaching that both our faiths (though duller "His shine through a dull spirit's prism) "Originally had one colour! "Better pursue a ...
— Christmas Eve • Robert Browning

... had regarded her honor as lightly as Germany and felt that the matter of self-preservation would excuse any moral dereliction, she would have imitated the example of Luxemburg, also invaded, and permitted free passage to the German army without essential loss of her material prosperity, but with a fatal ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck

... still accuse the jailer of more than a hundred felonious assaults upon prisoners, of attacks upon their lives by physical torture, by hunger, thirst, preposterous confinement in dark dungeons, and other illegal practices; and I now advance another step and accuse the visiting justices of gross dereliction of their duty, of neglecting to ascertain the real practice of the jailer in some points, and in others of encouraging, aiding and abetting him in open violations of the prison rules printed and issued by Act of Parliament. Of these rules, which are the jail ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... to disconcert Madam d'Epinay; probably she did not expect it. My melancholy situation, the severity of the season, the general dereliction of me by my friends, all made her and Grimm believe, that by driving me to the last extremity, they should oblige me to implore mercy, and thus, by vile meanness, render myself contemptible, to be ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... under" is solved and the dependence of one slat upon another in making a perfect whole is shown in a forcible way, particularly when the form falls to pieces in the attempt to lift it from the table. Edward Wiebe says in his "Paradise of Childhood": "It was the one slat which, owing to its dereliction in performing its duty, destroyed the figure and prevented all the other slats from performing theirs." One experience of this kind will teach more than a thousand precepts. The geometrical forms learned in the sense-training lessons can be reproduced with the slats and will thus be ...
— Hand-Loom Weaving - A Manual for School and Home • Mattie Phipps Todd

... mistaken, Lieutenant Horton," the admiral said. "Captain Walsham is not your accuser. Nay, more, he has himself committed a grave dereliction of duty in trying to screen you, and by endeavouring to destroy the principal evidence against you. Mr. Middleton overheard a conversation between the Canadian pilot and the French general, and the former described how he had been liberated by an English officer, who assisted him ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty

... negroes scouring the streets in all directions, to get to their places of abode, many of them in great trepidation, uttering ejaculations of terror as they ran. This was an inexorable law, and punishment or fine was sure to follow its dereliction, no excuse being available, and as the owners seldom submitted to pay the fine, the slaves were compelled to take the consequences, which, in the language that consigned them to the cruel infliction, "consisted of from ten to twenty lashes, well laid on with a ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... when He hung the dreadful cross upon, Had, as it were, a dereliction In this regard, in those great terrors He Had no one ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... life, and made improvements in them, as appears from the sketch of their history given by Moses. But they were without God in the world; having cast off his fear, and the apprehension of his presence, and their accountableness, which often follow the dereliction of the ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee

... state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, "I won't count this time!" Well, he may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it, but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve cells and fibres, the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... portion of the "1159th" Illinois. Quite a large number of this regiment have deserted upon every occasion offered, the men generally being very inattentive. The commanding officer of "all that is left of them" was severely censured, the other day, for dereliction of duty. The General swore by the Eternal he wished the Colonel of the "1159th" would "go ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett

... what Harlan feared would happen, had happened—that Deveny had come for Barbara. And Deveny had found her, through his dereliction. He had relaxed his vigilance for only a short time, and during that time Deveny ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer

... appointed to consider the status of the Sugar Act, favored the commission of Hutchinson as a special agent of the Colony to go to England and present the claims of the colonists, he was accused of inconsistency in opinion and action, and of dereliction of duty as the acknowledged leader of the patriotic party. Combined with the extraordinary appointment of Hutchinson, which however never took effect owing to the opposition of Governor Bernard, Otis was also charged with a too absolute recognition of the supremacy ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath

... oppressed by the accumulated weight of indictions and superindictions. [41] With this view he granted a universal amnesty, a final and absolute discharge of all arrears of tribute, of all debts, which, under any pretence, the fiscal officers might demand from the people. This wise dereliction of obsolete, vexatious, and unprofitable claims, improved and purified the sources of the public revenue; and the subject who could now look back without despair, might labor with hope and gratitude for himself and for his country. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... in the court, before the windows of the parlour, a well-known voice. 'I aver to you, my worthy friend,' said the speaker, 'that it is a total dereliction of military discipline; and were you not as it were a tyro, your purpose would deserve strong reprobation. For a prisoner of war is on no account to be coerced with fetters, or debinded in ergastulo, as would have been the case had you put this gentleman ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... action when alternatives of good and evil are before us. We look upon it as an instinct, magnetic in its power, incessantly prompting us towards the fulfilment of duty, and gravely reproaching us on its dereliction. We recognise it as the sweetest and most troublesome of visitants; sweetest when the peace unspeakable sinks into our souls, most troublesome when we have been guilty of a great betrayal. So delicate is that voice that nothing is easier than ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... refused, my note garbled, and, as I thought, my views again misrepresented. More than this, the implied charge is published to the world that I am seeking to excite "dissension among the churches," and "opposition to the constituted authority of Synod."[1] It would therefore be great dereliction of duty to return to my field of labor, allowing my own views, and the views of my co-laborers, to be thus mistaken in the Church, and such serious charges against our course unanswered. I am not aware that any censorship of ...
— History and Ecclesiastical Relations of the Churches of the Presbyterial Order at Amoy, China • J. V. N. Talmage

... observe them? Do we not daily see persons who believe themselves damned if they forget a mass, if they eat a fowl on Friday, if they neglect a confession, though they are guilty at the same time of great dereliction to society? Do they not hold the conduct of those very unjust, and very cruel, who happen to have the misfortune of not thinking and doing as they think and act? These practices, out of which a great number of men ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... lazily, or even perfidiously, abandoned that supervisorship in default of which neither right of inspection, nor duty of inspection, nor power of inspection, was found to be lodged in any quarter—there it was, precisely in that dereliction of censorial authority, that all went to ruin. All corporations grow corrupt, unless habitually kept under the eye of public inspection, or else officially liable to searching visitations. Now, who were the regular and official ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... the slightest dereliction of her penance would be accompanied with a curse upon her children may have impressed itself upon her mind. Mothers will understand better than other persons what this mother suffered from her ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various

... glanced back; he had looked once before, out of the tail of his eye. The laborers were idling in the cut, enjoying the brief rest, taking advantage of Carson's momentary dereliction, for the last car had ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... shall not be deserted in the hour of trial, and that this my weakness of mind will not be punished with a spiritual dereliction, for suffering myself to be too much attached to those worldly delights and pleasures, which no mortal ever enjoyed in a more exalted degree than myself. And I beseech you, my dearest lady, let me be always remembered in your prayers—only ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... judging when the spirit of the constitution has been changed, to condemn Clarendon for not throwing up his office, in the face of such rejection of his advice. It is enough to say that such action would have been deemed by Clarendon himself to be a dereliction of his duty. By all the memories of the past, by his affectionate reverence for his former master, by long association in the days of exile and misfortune—nay, also by his profound veneration for the Crown—Clarendon ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... Great Britain which she was so eager to take appeared to dance before her like an ignis fatuus. The invitation from Lady Pensil, for mysterious reasons, had never arrived; and poor Mr. Bantling himself, with all his friendly ingenuity, had been unable to explain so grave a dereliction on the part of a missive that had obviously been sent. He had evidently taken Henrietta's affairs much to heart, and believed that he owed her a set-off to this illusory visit to Bedfordshire. "He ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... provision should be viewed, as it really was, a reasonable compensation offered by Congress, at a time when they had nothing else to give to officers of the army, for services then to be performed. It was the only means to prevent a total dereliction of the service. It was a part of their hire; I may be allowed to say, it was the price of their blood, and of your independency. It is therefore more than a common debt; it is a debt of honor: it can never be considered as a pension, or gratuity, nor ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... having seen various amiable traits in their characters, she had arrived at the conclusion, that they were not naturally mechant; but that living in a country like England, where severity of morals punishes so heavily any dereliction from propriety, each individual, to prove personal correctness, was compelled to attack the sins of his or her acquaintance, as it furnished an opportunity of expressing their abhorrence by words, instead of proving it by actions, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various

... advocates have attempted to cast on the acts of the Legislative Council. I have no hesitation in saying that many of the bills which it is most severely blamed for rejecting, were bills which it could not have passed without a dereliction of its duty to the constitution, the connexion with Great Britain, and the whole English population of the colony. If there is any censure to be passed on its general conduct, it is for having confined itself to the merely negative and defensive duties of a legislative body; for having too frequently ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... themselves, or those who in private life became proficients in the various branches of science or in music, poetry or the languages, necessarily neglect their homes and families in consequence. Experience, in our own times, proves exactly the reverse. Dereliction of duty with regard to home duties results much more frequently from devotion to fashionable pleasures—considered quite allowable and womanly—than from the pursuit ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster

... outpost job on this week, at which my company achieved an unpremeditated success—unpremeditated by the authorities, that is. Before setting out we had been threatened with the heaviest penalties if we were discovered at any moment in a dereliction of duty, which meant that the Adjutant proposed to pay us a surprise visit and had every hope of discovering responsible officers asleep at their posts. Those who know will tell you that the hour before dawn is that during which an attack is most likely in real war; they ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various

... human errors directly or indirectly to God, or good, as if He were the 533:12 creator of evil. The allegory shows that the snake-talker utters the first voluble lie, which beguiles the woman and demoralizes the man. Adam, 533:15 alias mortal error, charges God and woman with his own dereliction, saying, "The woman, whom Thou gavest me, is responsible." According to this belief, the rib taken 533:18 from Adam's side has grown into an evil mind, named woman, who aids man to make sinners more rapidly than he can alone. Is this an help ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... had an interview with Mr. Meredith which proved something of a shock to that abstracted gentleman. She pointed out to him, none too respectfully, his dereliction of duty in allowing a waif like Mary Vance to come into his family and associate with his children without knowing or ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... parasol, removed her duster, hid it under a bowlder, and with a few shivers and cat-like strokes of her soft hands not only obliterated all material traces of the stolen cream of Carquinez Woods, but assumed a feline demureness quite inconsistent with any moral dereliction. Unfortunately, she forgot to remove at the same time a certain ring from her third finger, which she had put on with her duster and had worn at no other time. With this slight exception, the benignant fate which always protected that young person brought ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, 'I won't count this time!' Well! he may not count it and a kind heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve-cells and fibers the molecules are counting it, registering it, and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson

... on the subject of monopoly, which I shall at a future period fully establish, and which has occasioned the sacrifice of the public, to individual interest, I shall proceed to advert, 8thly, to the loss which the government has sustained in the dereliction of some of its most valuable servants, who have been allured, by the rapid fortunes made by several individuals, to quit the service of the public, and to embark in traffic. The inferior officers of the settlement, and the non-commissioned officers and privates of the regiment, have been infected ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann

... passed several resolves expressive of their astonishment. The Council humbly considered His Excellency's acquiescence with the wishes of the Assembly to be an unequivocal abandonment of the "Rights" of the Legislative Council, and a fatal dereliction of the first principles of the constitution. And with regard to the income tax, proposed by the Assembly, Mr. Ryland states that the whole saving that would have been effected by it, would only have been L2,500 ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... gratuitously ducking. Such a state of things could not last. W—— must change the air of Oxford or be suffocated. He chose the former; and let the sturdy moralist, who strains the point of the filial duties as high as they can bear, censure the dereliction; he cannot estimate the struggle. I stood with W——, the last afternoon I ever saw him, under the eaves of his paternal dwelling. It was in the fine lane leading from the High-street to the back of ***** college, where W—— kept his rooms. He seemed thoughtful, and more reconciled. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... position or salary shows either the value attached to his services or the feeling that special consideration was due to one who had voluntarily given his eyes for his country. "The choice lay before me," he writes, "between dereliction of a supreme duty and loss of eyesight; in such a case I could not listen to the physician, not if AEsculapius himself had spoken from his sanctuary; I could not but obey that inward monitor, I know not what, that spoke to me from heaven." ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... the town, on the look-out for Parisian gossip, to retail to the less adventurous members of their circle—were all delighted with M. Jerome: it was M. Jerome here, and M. Jerome there; and if M. Jerome happened to dine out, every one seemed to feel uneasy, and look upon him as guilty of a great dereliction of duty. They could almost as well ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various

... safeguard in the form of a letter to that gentleman, informing him of the important document which I held, and the danger in which it possibly stood from the family into whose toils I had now fallen? I could have cursed myself for my dereliction. ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green

... accusing him of contempt for her, charging him with thinking more of his own particular greatness than of her honour and service, and then "digressing into old griefs," said the envoy, "too long and tedious to write." She vehemently denounced Davison also for dereliction of duty in not opposing the measure; but he manfully declared that he never deemed so meanly of her Majesty or of his Lordship as to suppose that she would send him, or that he would go to the Provinces, merely, "to take command of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Mariana had behaved outrageously; she must be familiar with the whole, miserable, past episode; she had given him some very bad moments. He had a personal bitterness toward that old, unhappy affair, the dereliction of his dead grandfather—it had been, he had always felt, largely responsible for his own course in life; it had, before his birth even, formed his limitations, as it had ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... extravagance. Some cutting little sarcasms of Molly Gaverick's had likewise annoyed her, and she fretted under the miserable sense of her inadequacy to the demands of a world she despised and yet hankered after. Then Sir Luke had been tiresomely pertinacious over some small dereliction on Bridget's part from the canons of Government House etiquette, which he had requested should not be repeated. Rosamond Tallant had been tiresome also and had made her feel that even here she was no more than a dependent who must conform to the wills of her official superiors. ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... diverse kinds of motion. They wheeled about on high and made side-thrusts, and ran about, and rushed forward and rushed upwards. And those chastisers of foes began to strike each other with their swords. And each of them looked eagerly for the dereliction of the other. And both of those heroes leapt beautifully and both showed their skill in that battle, began also to make skilful passes at each other, and having struck each other, O king, those heroes took rest for a moment ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... elevating beauty of external nature, seem but a mockery when offered in place of the one thing needful—perfect and overflowing affection. The exterior decorum and attention on the part of an altered husband, which betrays to the world no dereliction of morals but what its easy code passes over as a right, is no substitute for love. Not unfrequently there is something almost appalling in the sense of solitude, which on occasions of sickness or retirement ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... anguish swept over His spirit in another foaming breaker, and again He sought solitude, and again He found tranquillity—and again returned to find the disciples asleep. 'They knew not what to answer Him' in extenuation of their renewed dereliction. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... shouts distributed their most useful property among those who were in want, burning and destroying all the rest with a cheerful alacrity which raised Alexander's spirits to the highest pitch. Yet Alexander was terrible and pitiless in all cases of dereliction of duty. He put to death Menander, one of his personal friends, because he did not remain in a fort, where he had been appointed to command the garrison; and he shot dead with his own hand Orsodates, a ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... travelling expenses; contracts are made or to be made, mails carried, postmasters appointed and paid. This is doubtless a very proper and necessary thing, one which the government could not have omitted without a plain dereliction of duty. The honor and interest of the nation required that as soon as the title to the country was settled, our citizens who were resident there, and those who shall go to settle there, should enjoy the benefits of the mail. And as it was the nation's business to establish the mail, ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt

... reputation, to make the character which he has exploited in his poems a faithful compend of American humanity, and to do this the rowdy element could not be entirely ignored. Hence he unflinchingly imputes it to himself, as, for that matter, he has nearly every sin and dereliction ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... and was regarded with affection by one of the hired native cattlemen, who taught the child to ride on a pony, and taught him so well that even at that tender age the boy could follow his teacher and guide at a fast gallop over the plain. One day Mr. Gilmour fell out with the man on account of some dereliction of duty, and after some hot words between them discharged him there and then. The young fellow mounted his horse and rode off vowing vengeance, and on that very day the child disappeared. The pony on which he had gone out riding came home, and as it was supposed that the ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson

... and his subsequent career was not one to be contemplated with admiration. Richardson, again, was appointed Clerk of the Peace for the Niagara District. Sir Peregrine Maitland could not pretend to overlook the dereliction of his confidential clerk, Captain Lyons, who was accordingly dismissed from that position. But this was not the end of the story. Many readers are doubtless familiar with Halifax's remark when Lawrence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, was removed from the post ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... chest, and, very carefully this time to make amends for his previous dereliction, carried it into the private office. He placed it on two chairs that his employer indicated and then withdrew, closing the door softly behind him and rejoicing at having ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes

... dissentient, shall listen attentively and give the most respectful and impartial consideration to the arguments of brethren, and especially of seniors. If a single mind remains unmoved, its dissent is decisive. But it would be the gravest dereliction of duty to persist from wilfulness, obstinacy, or pride, in adhesion to a view perhaps hastily expressed in opposition to authority and argument. The debate to which my speech gave rise lasted for two hours. Each speaker spoke but a few terse ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... is obvious that only a very serious dereliction of duty on Alfred's part could call for or justify; but, whatever he may have done to deserve it, his offenses were so fully expiated by his subsequent sufferings, and he atoned for them so nobly, too, by the wisdom, ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... right and duty of every member of Congress to propose any measure within the limits of the Constitution, which he believes is required by the interests of his constituents and the welfare of his country. Now mark the base surrender of this right—the wicked dereliction of this duty. All "resolutions and propositions" relating "in any way or to any extent whatever to the subject of slavery," shall be laid on the table, and "no further action whatever shall be had thereon." What a spectacle has been ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... is past! Every voice cries 'Away!' Tempt not with one last tear thy friend's ungentle mood; Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy stay: Duty and dereliction guide ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... appear effeminate, I know that none are more daring—indolent, none are more actively ambitious—utterly selfish, and I know that no earthly interest could bribe you into meanness or injustice—no, nor even into a venial dereliction of principle. It is from this estimate of your character, that I am frank and open to you. Besides, I recognize something in the careful pride with which you conceal your higher and deeper feelings, resembling the strongest ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... obligations to me, however anticipative of profit from me, however eager to curry favor with me, yet had vividly before him the dread of death, of death with torture, if any disloyalty of his, any dereliction in deed, word or thought, came to the notice of Commodus or Laetus or Eclectus, or if any one of them came to harbor any suspicion of him. All were vague, guarded, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... all together, then straggled apart; Mrs. Simonson being the first dereliction, as she was not quite equal to climbing as fast as the young people. Thus it came about that Nattie found herself alone with Clem, and suddenly stopping, with ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer

... the huzzas and hisses which his presence called forth. Silence being at length in some measure obtained, his lordship said he would not have addressed the meeting but that, having received a circular letter from the committee, and feeling the importance of the subject, he would have thought it a dereliction of his duty if he refrained from attending. He rose thus early because the observations he had to submit would not be suitable if made when the other resolutions were put. The first resolution was, in his opinion, ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald

... much to blame, for not one in that service would have thought for a moment of searching the cottage in the valley, unless positive information was received, nay more, unless that information was accompanied with threats of exposure, for dereliction of duty. Unfortunately, the custom house stamp was wanting upon the handkerchiefs, shawls, and other goods sent by Ragnar, and the family not only were deprived of them, but were menaced with fines and penalties, which ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen

... would seem a travesty upon rational education to force him to acquire this ability wholly during the eight years succeeding his school experience. If, at the age of eighteen, he does not exhibit some ability in this respect, the school may justly be charged with dereliction. ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson

... time; and the more, as great precaution was necessary to escape the vigilant eyes of Wallace, which seemed to be present in every part of the kingdom at once. So careful was he, in overlooking, by his well-chosen officers, civil and military, every transaction, that the slightest dereliction from the straight order of things was immediately seen and examined into. Many of these trusty magistrates having been placed in the Lothians, before March took the government, he could not now remove them ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... Root Foundation, but that ablest of all our Secretaries of State, and in the opinion of President Roosevelt, "the wisest man he ever knew," took care, it seems, not to mention the fact to the college authorities. When I reproached him with this dereliction, he ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie

... had the air of being ironical and insidious. To Annual Parliaments and Universal Suffrage, he would say, the principles of representation naturally and necessarily led,—any less extensive proposition was a base compromise and a dereliction of right; and the first encroachment on the people was the Act of Henry VI., which limited the power of election to forty-shilling freeholders within the county, whereas the real right was in the "outrageous and excessive" number of people by whom the preamble recites [Footnote: "Elections of knights ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... doctrinal difficulty which some have met at this point, has been imported into the field by a mistake in regard to the material scene. The leaving of the ninety and nine in the wilderness, while the shepherd went out to seek the strayed sheep, implied no dereliction of the shepherd's duty,—no injury to the body of the flock. In this transaction neither kindness nor unkindness was manifested towards those that remained on the pasture;—it had no bearing upon them at all. Nor is it necessary, at this stage, to determine who are represented by the ninety ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... was at first surprised and distrustful. But on Miss Halcombe's declaring that she only wanted to put some questions which she was too much agitated to ask at that moment, and that she had no intention of misleading the nurse into any dereliction of duty, the woman took the money, and proposed three o'clock on the next day as the time for the interview. She might then slip out for half an hour, after the patients had dined, and she would meet the lady in a retired place, outside the high north wall which screened ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... went on to do his duty, by himself. A narrow-minded man might have shaken solemn head, even if he had allowed such dereliction. But Dr. Upround knew that the girl was good, and he never put strain upon her honesty. So away she sped by a lonely little foot-path, where nobody could take from her contagion of bad morals; and avoiding the incline of boats, she made ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... movement betrayed her agonies, and yet, at that moment, the hand of God pressed heavily on her soul as well as on her body. That she might resemble Him to the end, her crucified Lord presented her once more with the bitter cup of interior dereliction which she had so often before shared with Him, again despoiling the inferior part of the soul of those heavenly consolations which would so greatly have lightened the pressure of physical suffering. "It is hard," the "Imitation of Christ" says, "to want all comfort, ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"

... inchoate wanting, and considered the elements of the position that were known to him. There was, in the first place, that old, lamentable dereliction of Lichfield Stope's, and its aftermath in his daughter. Millie had just recalled to Woolfolk the duration, the activity, of its poison. Here there was no possibility of escape by mere removal; the stain was within; and it must be thoroughly cleansed before she could cope successfully, ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer

... Hamtramck's regiment, the unfortified condition of the camp on the night before the attack, the posting of the militia in advance of the main army, and the utter lack of scouts and runners, were all bad enough, but on the other hand, the delay and confusion in the quartermaster's department, the dereliction of the contractors, and the want of discipline among the militia and the levies, were all matters of extenuation. To win was hopeless. To unjustly denounce an old and worthy veteran of the Revolution, who acted with so ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... suspicion." No citizen may be arrested under the statutes unless a crime has actually been committed. Thus, the police regulations deliberately compel every officer either to violate the law or to be made the subject of charges for dereliction of duty. A confusing state of things, truly, to a man who wants to do his duty by himself and ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... this case invaded, trampled upon, annihilated. Lord Bacon and Lord Middlesex represented no county or city: the rights of no freeholder, the franchises of no elector, were destroyed by their expulsion!" In his speech, Chatham declaimed with great severity against the gross dereliction of principle shown by the commons. They were, indeed, he said, the proper protectors of their own rights and privileges; but he lamented that they had, by their recent conduct, forgotten those privileges, and had added to the long list of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... it now than she has been in past years; the truth is that she is nearer to the recognition of it to-day than she has ever been. Derelict as she is to her primary obligation, it must yet be said that a consciousness of that dereliction is beginning to make her uneasy, and that has never before been true of any large portion of her membership. Since the earliest centuries the possibility of transforming the social order by purely spiritual influences has scarcely dawned upon her. ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden

... take lessons from their grooms, jockeys, or coachmen, and the nearer approach they can make to the appearance and manners of their tutors, the fitter the pupils for turf-men, or gentlemen dealers; for the school in which they learn is of such a description that dereliction of principle is by no means surprising—fleecing each other is an every-day practice—every one looks upon his fellow as a bite, and young men of fashion learn how to buy and sell, from old whips, jockeys, or rum ostlers, whose practices have put them up to every thing, and by such ruffian preceptors ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... this temporary dereliction of their antipathy to the sea, and intercourse with foreigners, the Egyptians can scarcely be regarded as a nation distinguished for their maritime and commercial enterprises; and they certainly by no means, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... spread it abroad that the goddess has vouchsafed me a dream. I will tell the Brahmins that they have been appointed her priests, and that their downfall has been due to their dereliction of duty in not seeing to the proper performance of her worship. Do you say I shall be uttering lies? No, say I, it is the truth—nay more, the truth which the country has so long been waiting to learn from my lips. If only I could get the opportunity to ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore

... as country may be, under certain conditions, Home, I am well aware. For many natures London has an attractiveness which is all its own. And yet to indulge one's taste for it may be a grave dereliction of duty. The State is built upon the Home, and as a training-place for social virtue, there can surely be no comparison between a home in the country and a home in London. All those educating influences which count for so much in the true home are infinitely weaker in ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... of the girl on a former occasion had rankled in the bosom of the old lady, perhaps because she perceived a certain element of justice in them, and by so much a measure of dereliction on her own part in the regulating of affairs between herself and her husband. Now, despite the kindliness of her nature and her real sympathy for the suffering of the niece who knelt at her knees, she could not ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan

... in this respect "un vrai peuple moderne," like the Americans. The Americans conceive of the executive as one of their appointed agents; when it intervenes in common life, it does so, they consider, in virtue of the mandate of the sovereign people, and there is no invasion or dereliction of freedom in that people interfering with itself. The French, the Swiss, and all nations who breathe the full atmosphere of the nineteenth century, think so too. The material necessities of this age require a strong ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... perhaps, is that portion of the general expenses of the District of Columbia on behalf of the United States, as appropriated in former years, and the judgments of the Court of Claims. The failure to make a reasonable contribution to the expenses of the nation's capital is an apparent dereliction on the part of the United States and rank injustice to the people here who bear the burdens, while to refuse or neglect to provide for the payment of solemn judgments of its own courts is apparently to repudiate. Of a different character, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson

... away through solitary lanes till he reached his quarters, utterly broken down in heart. The whole forenoon he lay on his iron bed, oblivious of all the world and steeped in his own tremendous sense of dereliction. It was in vain that the golden spring sun streamed through his windows rocking the room in waves of splendour. The glad sounds of voices, in the Square, of men and women enjoying the beautiful weather in promenades, were unheeded by him. The great voice of ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance

... all for Marian was to get along with old Jordan; for he was only a shadow of his former self. He never entered Daniel's room; if Marian wanted to see him she went upstairs, and there he sat, quiet, helpless, extinguished, a picture of utter dereliction. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... with us poor, weak, trampled-upon women? Lady Straitlace may do what she likes: she assumes a severe air in society, is strict with her children, and harsh with her servants. In all ranks of her acquaintance (of course below that of a countess) she visits the slightest dereliction from female propriety with unrelenting bitterness. Woe be to the trespasser, high or low! The weapon is always ready to probe and gash and lacerate; the lash is constantly raised, "swift to smite and never to spare." But who would ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville



Words linked to "Dereliction" :   actus reus, nonperformance, nonfeasance, neglect, wrongdoing, carelessness, wrongful conduct, neglectfulness, negligence, misconduct



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