[mod. Fr. abandon, f. vb. abandonner to ABANDON. See ABANDONMENT 5.] Lit. a letting loose, abandonment or surrender to natural impulses; hence entire freedom from artificial constraint or from conventional trammels, unconstrainedness of manner, careless freedom, dash.
1850. M. F. Ossoli, Woman in 19th Cent. (1862), 228. I love ‘abandon’ only when natures are capable of the extreme reverse.
1850. Mrs. Jameson, Sacred and Leg. Art, 210. Flung in all the abandon of solitude amid the depth of leafy recesses.
1851. Ruskin, Mod. Paint., I. II. V. ii. 4. 345. The magnificent abandon of Harding’s brush.
1868. Mrs. H. Wood, Red Court Farm, I. iv. 95. He bared his head to enter the summer-house, and held out his hand with an abandon of all ceremony.
1879. Dowden, Southey, iii. 75. He had not yet come out from the glow and the noble abandon of the South.
