forsaking

Verb

forsake (third-person singular simple present forsakes, present participle forsaking, simple past forsook, past participle forsaken)

1. (transitive) To abandon, to give up, to leave (permanently), to renounce (someone or something).
   • Doeſt thou forſake the deuill and all his workes? / Aunſwere. I forſake them.1549 March 7, Thomas Cranmer [et al.], compilers, “Of the Administracion of Publyke Baptisme to be Used in the Churche”, in The Booke of the Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacramentes, […]...
2. (obsolete, transitive) To decline or refuse (something offered).
   • The youthful Bull muſt wander in the Wood; / Behind the Mountain, or beyond the Flood: / [...] / With two fair Eyes his Miſtreſs burns his Breaſt; / He looks and languiſhes, and leaves his Reſt; / Forſakes his Food, and pining for the Laſs, / Is joyleſs of the Grove, and ſpurns the growing Graſs.1697, Virgil, “The Third Book of the Georgics”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, page 106, lines...
3. (obsolete, transitive) To avoid or shun (someone or something).
   • This was that Pascall lambe [i.e., Jesus] whose loue for vs so stood, / That on the mount of Caluerie, for vs did shed his blood: / Where hanging on the Crosse, no shame he did forsake, / Till death giuen him by pearcing speare, an ende of life did make.1878, Thomas Tusser, “The Authors Beleefe”, in Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie. […], London: Published for the English Dialect Society by Trübner & Co., […], →OCLC; republished as W[illiam]...
4. (obsolete, transitive) To cause disappointment to; to be insufficient for (someone or something).
   • Theſe birds, on the continent of America, continue to flutter the year round; as their food, which is the honey of flowers, never forſakes them in thoſe warm latitudes where they are found.1791, Oliver Goldsmith, “Of the Humming-bird, and Its Varieties”, in An History of the Earth, and Animated Nature. […], new edition, volume V, London: […] F[rancis] Wingrave, successor to Mr. [John]...