Relic

Tom from Maple City, Michigan, wrote with a question about a word in a recent edition

of the Traverse City Record-Eagle. A headline on page 1 read, “A River’s Relic.” Tom commented that he had heard of the relics of a saint, but not of a river. The caption for the photo referred to the Boardman River’s relic assignment.

Relic simply means remains. So a relic is anything left over from a previous time, and usually revered, though not always; sometimes it's used as an insult. It could be something connected to a person, historical remains, the trace of a custom or an idea, a geographical or topographical feature, etc. In the case of the Boardman River, it referred to the original natural riverbed.

The words relic, reliquary, relict, derelict, and dereliction all come from a Latin word, reliquia, meaning that which remains.

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