Word.ws English Dictionary

delinquish

delinquish verb: to relinquish.

Verb

delinquish (third-person singular simple present delinquishes, present participle delinquishing, simple past and past participle delinquished)

  1. (rare, transitive) to relinquish
    • as a thief being purſued with Hugh and cry to fave himſelf doth delinquiſh them1675, Greendwood, William, Βουλευτηριον, 5th edition, London, page 60
    • He agreed to delinquish his place on the vacation schedule.2000, Marcus, Stanley, edited by Hazel, Michael V., Stanley Marcus from A-Z: Viewpoints, volume II, Denton, Texas: University of North Texas Press, page 90
  2. (intransitive, obsolete) to fail in duty or obligation
    • The ſeuerer ſort eat not fleſh, or any thing that had life: but if any delinquiſh, their penance is not hard1617, Purchas, Samuel, Purchas his Pilgrimage, London: William Stansby, page 525

Forms of delinquish

third-person singular presentdelinquishes
present participledelinquishing
past participledelinquished
pastdelinquished

Origin of delinquish

Borrowed from Latin dēlinquō (“to fail, err”) with the addition of -ish. Sense 1 was influenced by the similar verb relinquish.

Questions about delinquish

What does delinquish mean?
Delinquish means to relinquish.
What part of speech is delinquish?
Delinquish is a verb.
What is the past tense of delinquish?
The past tense of delinquish is delinquished.

Words near delinquish in the dictionary

  1. delinquency
  2. delinquent
  3. delinquently
  4. delinquents
  5. delinquincy
  6. delinquish
  7. delint
  8. delinted
  9. delinter
  10. delinters
  11. delinting

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: delinquish (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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