Relics

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Objects or artifacts that have survived from a bygone era, often treasured for their cultural or historical significance
2. Items left behind from earlier periods that may embody historical, artistic, or religious value
3. Items from previous times kept because they represent historical or cultural importance

Etymology: Relics began as things left behind on purpose, or at least left behind. The Latin "reliquiae" meant "remains," and it came from "relinquere," to leave behind or abandon, built from "re-" and "linquere," to leave. The same root gave English "relinquish," which still means to give something up, and "derelict," a building or ship abandoned to ruin. "Relict," meaning a widow or a surviving thing, is a close cousin too. The sense of holy remains arrived through the Church. Old French took the word as "relique," and in medieval Christianity a relic came to mean the bodily remains of a saint or an object associated with one. Middle English adopted it in this religious sense, so the earliest English relics were mostly bones, cloth, and fragments of the holy dead, not the broader sense of old things we use today.

Synonyms: artifacts, remnants