RELIN'QUISH, verb transitive [Latin relinquo, re and linquo, to leave, to fail or faint; from the same root as liqueo, liquo, to melt or dissolve, deliquium, a fainting. Hence the sense is to withdraw or give way; to relinquish is to recede from.]

1. To withdraw from; to leave; to quit. It may be to forsake or abandon, but it does not necessarily express the sense of the latter. A man may relinquish an enterprise for a time, or with a design never to resume it. In general, to relinquish is to leave without the intention of resuming, and equivalent to forsake, but is less emphatical than abandon and desert.

They placed Irish tenants on the lands relinquished by the English.

2. To forbear; to withdraw from; as, to relinquish the practice of intemperance; to relinquish the rites of a church.

3. To give up; to renounce a claim to; as, to relinquish a debt.

To relinquish back, or to, to give up; to release; to surrender; as, to relinquish a claim to another.