This is one of those situations where I idly wonder about where a common word — in this case, abandon — comes from, and fall down a rabbit hole. The OED has revised its entry relatively recently (2011); it says the verb is from Anglo-Norman and Middle French (h)abandoner, “apparently either < abandon abandon n.¹ or directly < the phrase a bandon (see abandon adv.),” so let’s check those out. The noun:
< Anglo-Norman abandun, abaundun abandonment, surrender (first half of the 13th cent. or earlier) and Middle French abandon power, jurisdiction, discretion (12th cent. in Old French (see phrases below); French abandon; also in sense ‘freedom from constraint’ (1607 in en abandon without constraint)) < a bandon (see abandon adv.).
OK, let’s see abandon adv:
< Anglo-Norman a bandun, a baundoun, a baundun, Anglo-Norman and Old French, Middle French a bandon under (one’s) jurisdiction or control (c1176 in mettre a bandon: see note), freely, willingly (c1230 or earlier), in abundance (c1230 or earlier), unrestrainedly (late 12th cent. or earlier), completely (c1235 or earlier) < a at, to (see a- prefix⁵) + bandon bandon n. Compare to be at a person’s bandon at bandon n. 1.
Notes
With sense 1 [‘Under control or authority; at one’s disposal’] compare Anglo-Norman aver a bandun, to have in one’s jurisdiction, under one’s control (first half of the 14th cent. or earlier), Anglo-Norman and Middle French mettre a bandon, mettre a son bandon to put under one’s jurisdiction, leave to one’s mercy (c1176), to entrust (second half of the 12th cent. or earlier). With sense 2 [‘At one’s own will or discretion, without interference or restraint’] compare Middle French a son bandon at his pleasure. Compare also the phrases cited at abandon n.¹
The entry for bandon n. ‘Jurisdiction, authority, dominion, control’ hasn’t been revised since 1885, so let’s check Merriam-Webster’s verb etymology for the rest of the story:
Middle English abandounen, borrowed from Anglo-French abanduner, derivative of abandun “surrender, abandonment,” from the phrase a bandun “in one’s power, at one’s disposal,” from a “at, to” (going back to Latin ad “to”) + bandun “jurisdiction,” going back to a Gallo-Romance derivative of Old Low Franconian *bann- “summons, command” (with -d- probably from outcomes of Germanic *bandwō “sign”) — more at at entry 1, ban entry 1, banner entry 1
I confess I did not go down those final rabbit holes; I abandoned the quest, as you might say. But there’s plenty there to chew on.
I take it the adverb is obsolete? There’s to my mind an interesting difference between the verb and noun because the verb is maybe a little marked as more “dramatic” than some potential synonyms like “discard” but not excessively so, whereas the noun is pretty much always going to be dramatic-sounding.
I was put in mind of the directive “so burn with mad abandon” from Kendra Smith’s underappreciated 1992 song “The Wheel of the Law.” And maybe it’s striking there because most of the lyrics are sort of half-baked hippie Buddhism. Why burn with mad abandon given that you’ve just told us a line or two earlier that “this floating world’s a dream”? I dunno, but it somehow works in context.
I take it the adverb is obsolete?
Yes, and it is so marked in OED; here are the senses and citations:
Very obsolete indeed, in other words.
The “abandon all hope” translation from Dante’s Inferno retains the sense of doing without, a loss, leaving hope, though, to me, when someone acts with abandon, though it can be analyzed as being free from restraint, it feels like a gain, if that makes sense.
The Dante usage (from a translator, of course) is maybe actually a bit odd, and I don’t know if there’s a more idiomatic alternative in English for “lasciate ogni speranza.”* Just as one hopes to get something desired (although maybe the desire is a bad idea that will backfire …) when one acts “with abandon” (having abandoned self-restraint), one typically abandons something because it is an obstacle to the pursuit of something more worthwhile-under-the-circumstances.
To go back to Dylan because why not, “We drove that car as far as we could / Abandoned it out west” doesn’t suggest to me much of a sense of privation-as-such, but that the characters had reached some new stage in their journey where the car was of no further use to them in achieving their next immediate goal (or goals, as they were in the next lines diverging and going in different directions …) and they were thus better off without it.
Or consider the famous parable (attr. Thos. Merton) about the Tibetan monks fleeing the Communist invasion in 1959 but moving slowly because they are traveling with yaks carrying the monastery’s treasures. The PLA troops get closer and closer and ultimately it is the monk who is willing to abandon the yaks and their cargo who is able to make it to the river and cross to India and safety.
*wiktionary gives “to leave (something behind)” as its sense 1 of the underlying verb lasciare, and “abandon” would clearly be the wrong English word if used to translate the first example sentence.
“Let go of all hope”…
I was put in mind of the directive “so burn with mad abandon” from Kendra Smith’s underappreciated 1992 song “The Wheel of the Law.” And maybe it’s striking there because most of the lyrics are sort of half-baked hippie Buddhism. Why burn with mad abandon given that you’ve just told us a line or two earlier that “this floating world’s a dream”?
My knowledge of Buddhism is at the hippie level if that, but maybe “abandon” is supposed to suggest non-attachment and “burn” is supposed to suggest the Fire Sermon/Sutta/Sutra.
“Let go of all hope”…
or “release all hope”, for more of a yoga-class feel (or to see whether that hope was really ours at all…)
or we could go to sondheim, with a nod to yip harburg?
“it’s all so simple / relax, let go [all hope], let fly / so someone tell me why / can’t i?”
@Jerry F.: for context, I herewith cut and paste someone’s online transcription (done w/o capitalization or linebreaks, and I omitted some repetition): “i call on ships in the night to force a path for the light, open their hearts and their minds to this song. set fire to mens lives with the bonfire flames, insects throw their lives into the bonfire flames, under it you’ll see this world is darkness and this floating world’s a dream so burn in mad abandon and there’s nothing to it at all, keep on turning the wheel of the law and i’ll turn back the tides of time so you don’t feel the pain, here in this citadel times keep changing day by day, dive dive into the deep blue dream, they don’t feel me anymore though i’m just outside their door, they keep turning the wheel of the law and we can open the gates of the sun.” Maybe the Buddhist quotient is lower than I suggested although the allusion in the title is obvious? I dunno. There had been 25 years or more to refine the psychedelic-hippie rhetoric by this point.
That works in my pop idea of Buddhism. All things and people are on fire and she wants all people to be enlightened by that knowledge so they can abandon their attachments and be free from pain.
“Turn back the tide of time” is a little mysterious to me, but musically it applies. The second comment on this YouTube video hits the nail on the head with “Enoesque”.
The link Jerry attempted to embed under the words “this YouTube video” doesn’t work for me, so I can’t assess whether or not this is an instance of The Young People Today using an unhelpfully broad sense of Enoesqueness or not.
Sorry, I don’t know what I did wrong, but try
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqktvDCpSsg&list=RDiqktvDCpSsg&start_radio=1
It’s lasciate qui ogni speranza, right? So… just… “leave it here”.
(To keep the meter, the traditional German translation veers off in a completely different direction: lasst alle Hoffnung fahren – “let it zoom off”… like the yoga class, but much more dramatic, even violent.)
Not right. The Petrocchi text (based on the full manuscript tradition of the first half of the 14th century, before the text established by Boccaccio started to dominate) has:
*shaking fist in Boccaccio’s general direction*