abandon

Picture a medieval French lord opening his forest to everyone: pasture the animals, cut the wood, take what the law now permits. The legal phrase was mettre sa forêt à bandon—putting the forest “at discretion”—and that phrase eventually produced abandonner. The surprising ingredient is bandon, whose ancestor meant a proclamation: a public command could place something under official jurisdiction, or declare someone an outlaw. It is related to English ban, so to abandon something originally had less of a lonely-castaway feeling than a courtroom-and-feudal one: you surrendered your claim and put the matter under someone else’s control. By the late 15th century, English had shifted the emphasis from relinquishing rights to deserting people or things; abandon still preserves the older sense in “abandon oneself to emotion,” as if handing oneself over to an irresistible authority.