vestige
Americannoun
-
a mark, trace, or visible evidence of something that is no longer present or in existence.
A few columns were the last vestiges of a Greek temple.
- Synonyms:
- token
-
a surviving evidence or remainder of some condition, practice, etc..
These superstitions are vestiges of an ancient religion.
-
a very slight trace or amount of something.
Not a vestige remains of the former elegance of the house.
- Synonyms:
- suggestion, hint
-
Biology. a degenerate or imperfectly developed organ or structure that has little or no utility, but that in an earlier stage of the individual or in preceding evolutionary forms of the organism performed a useful function.
-
Archaic. a footprint; track.
noun
-
a small trace, mark, or amount; hint
a vestige of truth
no vestige of the meal
-
biology an organ or part of an organism that is a small nonfunctioning remnant of a functional organ in an ancestor
Related Words
See trace 1.
Etymology
Origin of vestige
First recorded in 1535–45; from Middle French, from Latin vestīgium “footprint”
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Warner has $33.5 billion in debt — another vestige of the 2022 merger, which led to thousands of job losses and dumped programming.
From Los Angeles Times
They were tough sanctions, removing any vestige of royal status.
From BBC
Along the oil-streaked shores of Lake Maracaibo — actually a massive coastal lagoon, fed by both freshwater rivers and the Caribbean — the vestiges of a once-thriving enterprise stand out like totems from a past civilization.
From Los Angeles Times
The middle layers of management—so central to today’s corporate structure—could be a vestige of the past.
There were wild blackberries and raspberries blanketing the hillsides, and vestiges of old fruit orchards.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
