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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