relic

noun
/ˈɹɛlɪk/

Etymology

From Middle English relik et al., from Old French relique, from Latin reliquiae (“remains, relics”), from relinquō (“to leave behind, abandon, relinquish”), from re- + linquō (“to leave, quit, forsake, depart from”). Doublet of relict, derelict, and relinquish.

  1. derived from reliquiae
  2. derived from relique
  3. inherited from relik

Definitions

  1. That which remains

    That which remains; that which is left after loss or decay; a remaining portion.

    • […] let him not ask our pardon; The nature of his great offence is dead, And deeper than oblivion we do bury The incensing relics of it […]
    • Though a Cup of cold water from ſome hand may not be without it's reward, yet ſtick not thou for Wine and Oyl for the Wounds of the Distreſſed, and treat the poor, as our Saviour did the Multitude, to the reliques of ſome baskets.
  2. Something old and outdated, possibly kept for sentimental reasons.

    • Published in 1982, the now out-of-print computer guide is a real relic, full of dozens of black-and-white pictures of large, bulky computers that you would sooner find in the Smithsonian than on anybody's desk today.
  3. A part of the body of a saint, or an ancient religious object, kept for veneration.

    • Why ſhould onely I, Of all the other Princes of the World, Be caſ’d-vp, like a holy Relique?
    • No Anchorite in the exstasy of devotion, ever adored a relique with more fervour than that with which I kissed this inimitable proof of my charmer’s candour, generosity and affection!
    • […] the duke, in order to support their drooping hopes, ordered a procession to be made with the reliques of St. Valori, and prayers to be said for more favourable weather.
  4. + 3 more definitions
    1. A particle or entity that has existed since the Big Bang.

      • One of the primary targets of current and especially future cosmological observations are light thermal relics of the hot big bang.
    2. To cause (an object) to appear old or worn, to distress.

      • The whole idea of relicing an instrument is to accelerate the wear and tear that normally occurs over decades.
      • He's since run his own shop, building, winding/making pickups, doing restorations and relicing guitars.
    3. Pertaining to the Big Bang.

      • A more realistic model must include the presence of perturbations whose extra energy can produce distortions of the relic radiation spectrum.
      • While Lasserre acknowledges that physicists are still decades away from observing a direct relic neutrino signal, he says that this work represents an important step forward in the search for the holy grail of neutrino physics.
      • We carry out model-independent analysis to obtain the temperature at the end of inflation and the estimate for the upper bound on the Hubble parameter to circumvent the problem due to relic gravitational waves

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at relic. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01relic02saint03blessed04protection05remaining06remains07relics

A definitional loop anchored at relic. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

7 hops · closes at relic

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA