ABJECT
adjective | AB-jekt
What It Means
Abject usually describes things that are extremely bad or severe. It can also describe something that feels or shows shame, or someone lacking courage or strength.
// Happily, their attempts to derail the project ended in abject failure.
// The defendants were contrite, offering abject apologies for their roles in the scandal that cost so many their life savings.
// The author chose to cast all but the hero of the book as abject cowards.
Examples of ABJECT
“This moment … points toward the book’s core: a question of how to distinguish tenderness from frugality. Is ‘Homework’ about a child who took a remarkably frictionless path, aided by a nation that had invested in civic institutions, from monetary hardship to the ivory tower? Merely technically. Is it a story of how members of a family, protected by a social safety net from abject desperation, developed different ideas about how to relate to material circumstance? We’re getting there.” — Daniel Felsenthal, The Los Angeles Times, 9 June 2025.
Examples of ABJECT
“This moment … points toward the book’s core: a question of how to distinguish tenderness from frugality. Is ‘Homework’ about a child who took a remarkably frictionless path, aided by a nation that had invested in civic institutions, from monetary hardship to the ivory tower? Merely technically. Is it a story of how members of a family, protected by a social safety net from abject desperation, developed different ideas about how to relate to material circumstance? We’re getting there.” — Daniel Felsenthal, The Los Angeles Times, 9 June 2025
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
