intransitive verb. To relinquish (power or responsibility) formally.

intransitive verb. To relinquish formally a high office or responsibility.

To give up, renounce, abandon, lay down, or withdraw from, as a right or claim, office, duties, dignity, authority, and the like, especially in a voluntary, public, or formal manner.

To discard; cast away; take leave of: as, to abdicate one's mental faculties. In civil law, to disclaim and expel from a family, as a child; disinherit during lifetime: with a personal subject, as father, parent.

To put away or expel; banish; renounce the authority of; dethrone; degrade.

Synonyms To resign, renounce, give up, quit, vacate, relinquish, lay down, abandon, desert. (See list under abandon, v.)

To renounce or give up something; abandon some claim; relinquish a right, power, or trust.

intransitive verb. To relinquish or renounce a throne, or other high office or dignity.

transitive verb. To surrender or relinquish, as sovereign power; to withdraw definitely from filling or exercising, as a high office, station, dignity.

transitive verb. To renounce; to relinquish; -- said of authority, a trust, duty, right, etc.

transitive verb. To reject; to cast off.

transitive verb. To disclaim and expel from the family, as a father his child; to disown; to disinherit.

verb. give up, such as power, as of monarchs and emperors, or duties and obligations

"The word abdicate has to our ears a certain regal sound."

give up  renounce  resign  vacate  

abandon  abandon  abjure  acknowledge defeat  be pensioned  

abdicated  abdicates  abdicating