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dereliction.

Willful neglect of one's duty.

11 characters4 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/dɛɹ.ɪˈlɪk.ʃən/General-American, Received-Pronunciation
  1. Willful neglect of one's duty.

    countable · uncountable
    The new soldier did not clean his cabin and was scolded for dereliction and disobedience.
    What he did was a terrible dereliction of duty.
  2. The act of abandoning something, or the state of being abandoned.

    countable · uncountable
  3. Land gained from the water by a change of water-line.

    countable · uncountable
Where this word comes from

From Latin dērelictiō (“neglect, abandonment”), from dērelinquō (“to neglect, abandon”), from dē- + re- + linquō (“to leave”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.