different between vacant vs derelict

English

Etymology

From Old French vacant, from Latin vacans.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?ve?k?nt/

Adjective

vacant (comparative more vacant, superlative most vacant)

1. Not occupied; empty.

   vacant lot

2. Showing no intelligence or interest.

   a vacant stare

Synonyms

• (Not occupied): available, empty, free, uninhabited, unoccupied
• (Showing no intelligence or interest): vacuous, thousand mile stare

Derived terms

• vacancy noun
• vacantly adverb

Related terms

• unfilled
• vacate verb

Translations

Anagrams

• Van cat

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /va.k??/

Adjective

vacant (feminine singular vacante, masculine plural vacants, feminine plural vacantes)

1. vacant

Further reading

• “vacant” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Latin

Verb

vacant

1. third-person plural present active indicative of vac?

Piedmontese

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /va?ka?t/

Adjective

vacant

1. vacant

Romanian

Etymology

From French vacant, from Latin vacans.

Adjective

vacant m or n (feminine singular vacant?, masculine plural vacan?i, feminine and neuter plural vacante)

1. unoccupied

Declension

English

Etymology

Latin derelictus, perfect passive participle of d?relinqu? (“to forsake, abandon”) from d?- + relinqu? (“to abandon, relinquish, leave (behind)”), from r?- + linqu? (“to leave, quit, forsake, depart from”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?d???l?kt/

Adjective

derelict (comparative more derelict, superlative most derelict)

1. Abandoned, forsaken; given up by the natural owner or guardian; (of a ship) abandoned at sea, dilapidated, neglected; (of a spacecraft) abandoned in outer space.

   There was a derelict ship on the island.

   • 1649, Jeremy Taylor, The History of the Life and Death of Jesus Christ

     The affections which these exposed or derelict children bear to their mothers, have no grounds of nature or assiduity but civility and opinion.
2. Negligent in performing a duty.
3. Lost; adrift; hence, wanting; careless; neglectful; unfaithful.
   • 1774, Edmund Burke, A Speech on American Taxation

     They easily prevailed, so as to seize upon the vacant, unoccupied, and derelict minds of his friends; and instantly they turned the vessel wholly out of the course of his policy.

   • 1859, John Buchanan, Third State of the Union Address

     A government which is either unable or unwilling to redress such wrongs is derelict to its highest duties.

Synonyms

• (abandoned): abandoned

Translations

Noun

derelict (plural derelicts)

1. Property abandoned by its former owner, especially a ship abandoned at sea.
2. (dated) An abandoned or forsaken person; an outcast.
   • 1911 Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax” (Norton 2005, p.1364):

     A rather pathetic figure, the Lady Frances, a beautiful woman, still in fresh middle age, and yet, by a strange chance, the last derelict of what only twenty years ago was a goodly fleet.

3. A homeless and/or jobless person; a person who is (perceived as) negligent in their personal affairs and hygiene. (This sense is a modern development of the preceding sense.)
   • 2002, in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of D. H. Lawrence, The Boy in the Bush, edited by Paul Eggert, page 22:

     If they're lazy derelicts and ne'er-do-wells she'll eat 'em up. But she's waiting for real men — British to the bone —

Translations

See also

• flotsam
• jetsam
• lagan
• salvage

Anagrams

• relicted, reticled