abrogate

Etymology

First attested in 1526, from Middle English abrogat (“abolished”), from Latin abrogātus, perfect passive participle of abrogō (“repeal”), formed from ab (“away”) + rogō (“ask, inquire, propose”). See rogation.

verb

  1. (transitive, law) To annul by an authoritative act; to abolish by the authority of the maker or her or his successor; to repeal; — applied to the repeal of laws, decrees, ordinances, the abolition of customs, etc.
    But let us look a little further, and see whether the New Testament abrogates what we see so frequently used in the Old. 1660, Robert South, “The Scribe instructed, &c.”, in Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions, volume 2, page 252
    Whose laws, like those of the Medes and Persian, they cannot alter or abrogate. 1796, Edmund Burke, Letter I. On the Overtures of Peace.
    The rule known as the “year and a day rule” […] is abrogated for all purposes. 2000, Legislative Council of Hong Kong, “Statute Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Ordinance 2000”, in Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Gazette, page A1059
  2. (transitive) To put an end to; to do away with.
  3. (molecular biology, transitive) To block a process or function.

adj

  1. (archaic) Abrogated; abolished.
    Where hunters and woodcutters once slept in their boots by the dying light of their thousand fires and went on, old teutonic forebears with eyes incandesced by the visionary light of a massive rapacity, wave on wave of the violent and insane, their brains stoked with spoorless analogues of all that was, lean aryans with their abrogate semitic chapbook reenacting the dramas and parables therein and mindless and pale with a longing that nothing save dark's total restitution could appease. 1979, Cormac McCarthy, Suttree, Random House, page 4

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