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abandon

/əˈbændən//əˈbændən/·verb
to leave or give up something completely and for good
Fig. 1 — I watch someone open their hand and let the leash slip out of it.
01Definition

To abandon is to walk away and not come back — to give up a thing, a place, or a person entirely, leaving it to its fate. You abandon a sinking ship, an old plan, a search. The word carries finality and often a trace of failure or desertion: what is abandoned is left behind, untended, alone. There is a second, almost opposite sense in the noun phrase 'with abandon', meaning with complete freedom from restraint — but the verb is about letting go for good.

02In use
  • iResearchers who abandon a line of inquiry too early often miss what those who persist go on to find.
  • iiThe company abandoned the project once its funding began to deplete.
  • iiiForced to abandon the village, the families left behind everything they could not carry.
03Collocations
  • abandon a plan
  • abandon ship
  • abandon hope
  • be forced to abandon
  • abandon all caution

Family abandonment (noun) · abandoned (adjective)

04Relations

=desert, forsake, relinquish, give up, leave behind

≠keep, retain, pursue, achieve

05Compared
PairThe difference
abandon vs achievegive it up before the finish → abandon; reach the finish → achieve.
abandon vs desertsimply leave something behind → abandon; break a duty you were sworn to keep → desert (a betrayal).
abandon vs forsakea plain, everyday leaving → abandon; solemnly renounce something dear, a faith or a vow → forsake.
abandon vs give upleave a thing behind → abandon; stop trying → give up (you give up ON a person, but abandon them).
abandon vs keeplet it go for good → abandon; hold on to it → keep.

Also compared with leave behind, pursue, relinquish, retain

06TOEFL & IELTS

A strong verb for IELTS Writing on policy and history — 'the government abandoned the scheme' is crisper than 'stopped'. Note the two senses: the everyday verb (give up, desert) and the literary noun 'with abandon' (without restraint). The adjective abandoned means deserted (an abandoned factory). Spelling trap: one b, and the ending is -on, not -en.

07Asked
What does 'with abandon' mean?
With abandon means without restraint — doing something freely, holding nothing back ('they danced with reckless abandon'). It is the noun sense of the word, and it feels almost opposite to the verb: the verb lets go of a thing for good, the noun lets go of your own inhibitions. 'Reckless abandon' and 'wild abandon' are its two fixed companions.
Is abandon a noun or a verb?
Both, but very unequally. The verb does nearly all the work (abandon a plan, a ship, a search). The noun survives almost exclusively inside 'with abandon' — it has no plural, takes no article, and sounds odd anywhere else. If you meet abandon without 'with', read it as a verb.
How do you spell the past tense of abandon?
Abandoned — one b, and the ending is -oned, never '-onned' or '-ened'. The misspellings 'abandonned' and 'abandened' are both common enough to be search suggestions. The stress stays on the second syllable throughout: a-BAN-don, a-BAN-doned, a-BAN-don-ing.
What does 'abandoned' mean as an adjective?
Deserted and left to decay: an abandoned factory, an abandoned car, an abandoned dog. It describes the thing left behind, not the person leaving — which is exactly where the scene above ends: the small dog sitting square in its shrinking patch of light is what abandoned looks like.
What is the difference between abandon and desert?
Both mean leaving for good, but desert stresses walking out on a duty you owed — soldiers desert a post, abandon stresses leaving something helpless. The full side-by-side comparison, with both animated scenes, lives on the abandon vs desert page linked in the 'Compared' list above, alongside this word's other pairings.
What does 'abandon ship' mean?
Literally, it is the captain's formal order to evacuate a sinking vessel — the last command given. Figuratively, to abandon ship is to quit a failing project or organization before it goes down ('investors abandoned ship'). The figurative use keeps the original's whiff of emergency and finality.
Is abandon formal enough for academic writing?
Yes — it is the crisp, neutral register of policy and history prose: 'the city abandoned the reform' closes the matter in one word, with a finality 'stopped' lacks. The noun abandonment carries the same weight into law ('abandonment of a claim', 'child abandonment') — proof that the word's leaving is always understood to be for good.