Talk:Relict

Ethnology
I have noted that relict can be used also in ethnology, with analogous meaning. It would be nice to see this added to the article. Etxrge 07:56, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Bastard line
I have seen the term "relict" used to mean a bastard line. For instance "the House of Braganza was a relict of the House of Aviz, itself a relict of the Burgundian line of the Capetian dynasty ruling in Portugal)." But I can't find any support for this usage anywhere.  Does anybody know of this? john k 08:02, 4 August 2005 (UTC)


 * That's a new one on me. Is this in very old sources? Deb 21:19, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Ancient term
"Ancient term"? Could you call any usage of an english word an ancient term? Since english as we know it hasn't been around for a complete millenium, how can anything relating to it be called ancient? Verification of this is needed or a modification of the claim.
 * It's actually a generic or collective term for widows and widowers. Any person who has lost their spouse can be called a relict, and a group consisting of widows and widowers would be called a group of relicts. JackofOz 20:09, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

2007-02-9 Automated pywikipediabot message
--CopyToWiktionaryBot 03:35, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Legal Significance
I understood that in legal terms 'relict' had a specific meaning overlapping widow/widower, but not identical; that is, someone whose spouse has died can be a widow(er) but not a relict, a relict but not a widow(er), or both.

I have not been able to find a good definition online (yet), but IIRC a widow is any woman who has been legally married to the deceased (although she is not necessarily married to him at the time of his death), and has not yet re-married; whereas the woman who was married to him at the time of his death is his relict, and remains so regardless of whether she ever marries again (and vice-versa with the genders, of course). Or it may have something to do with the marriage having legitimate issue - I'm entirely open to correction.

I believe it affects their rights to the deceased's estate; a relict widow's claim is superior to that of a divorced widow, but any widow who remains unmarried may be able to assert a better claim if the relict re-marries (and is therefore no longer a widow). Swiveler (talk) 06:28, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Wiktionary
Someone needs to fix the wiktionary entry, this page is much better than that one. 76.66.197.30 (talk) 06:30, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Proposed split
A banner has been placed at the top of the article proposing a split. It seems to me there are two basic versions of the term, and one has been expanded on in this article and the other has not. All the earth and life sciences and humanities (i.e. biology, geology, history, linguistics) use the term for fundmentally the same concept: a surviving remnant of a natural phenomenon. Unlike certain other words that are used as terms for fundamentally different things in different disciplines, such as Mobbing and Mobbing (animal behavior), or the many usages of the word colony, the term relict is has a consistent meaning; once you understand the concept in one context, when you encounter it in another context you get the idea without further explanation. So I think all that stuff should remain together in one article. However, it would seem appropriate to have a separate article for the real estate law usage. At this time, there is not enough content to split off anything more than a stub, but at least at that point it could be tagged as a law term stub. As for the meaning of widow/widower, that should probably go in an Other Uses section at the bottom of this article.--Brambleshire (talk) 19:40, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I doubt that the Law meaning could produce a viable article. I am removing the split tag and replacing it with an expand and ref tag. When it at least has a reference (not a dictionary one) then it could be split. Op47 (talk) 16:05, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Carnivorous marsupials and relicts
I'll assume someone misinterpreted Quammen's "Song of the Dodo" reference to the thylacine as being a relict carnivorous marsupial. I don't have the book so I can't check the reference. However, this might be a misunderstanding; carnivorous marsupials are still with us (e.g. quolls, dunnarts and planigales). Perhaps they meant marsupials over a certain size? If this is not the case, then perhaps another animal, such as the tuatara, might provide a better example of relict. BoundaryRider (talk) 04:40, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
 * That statement is not very precisely worded, because the source doesn't say it is a relict marsupial carnivore, but rather says the Tasmanian population of the thylacine is, or was, the relict population of the that species. Here is the quote from page 287 of the paperback edition of Song of the Dodo: "The extension of its range from mainland Australia into Tasmania is what enabled T. cynocephalus to survive into modern times. On the mainland it went extinct much earlier. On Tasmania it was relictual -- stranded but saved (at least temporarily) from the forces of doom that had swept across the larger landmass..." You make a good point, though, that perhaps the tuatara would be a clearer example.--Brambleshire (talk) 05:37, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and reworded that statement in the interest of the integrity of the article. That's not to say I don't think it would be an improvement to change the example to tuatara if someone has a good source of reference.--Brambleshire (talk) 15:01, 11 January 2013 (UTC)