jettison
- to cast (goods) overboard in order to lighten a vessel or aircraft or to improve its stability in an emergency.
- to throw off (something) as an obstacle or burden; discard.
- Cards. to discard (an unwanted card or cards).
- the act of casting goods from a vessel or aircraft to lighten or stabilize it.
- jetsam.
Origin of jettison
Examples from the Web for jettison
Contemporary Examples
Jettison your lawyers as a source of prison-yard guidance, Abramoff said.
But they also bequeathed to us a founding racism that we have found it almost impossible to jettison.
The other companies to jettison Deen were more interested in their image than the bottom line.
Nor does he believe it will force the company to jettison full-time workers.
It will jettison the reactionary messages that alienated so many persuadable voters in 2012.
Historical Examples
They might have defeated their own purpose by making him jettison his contraband!
Smugglers' ReefJohn Blaine
If it came to the worst, he thought, he could jettison his pack.
The Silent ReadersWilliam D. Lewis
So its cheapest to jettison haythanks for that new word, Ed.
The Last of the FlatboatsGeorge Cary Eggleston
No occasion to jettison any of our cargo yet, however useless it may be.
The Life of a Celebrated BuccaneerRichard Clynton
What the country then needed was a jettison of compromises, and a resolution of doubts.
The Life of Lyman TrumbullHorace White
jettison
- to throw away; abandonto jettison old clothes
- to throw overboard
- another word for jetsam (def. 1)
Word Origin
Word Origin and History for jettison
v.
1848, from jettison (n.) "act of throwing overboard" to lighten a ship. This noun was an 18c. Marine Insurance writers' restoration of the earlier form and original sense of the 15c. word that had become jetsam, probably because jetsam had taken on a sense of "things cast overboard" and an unambiguous word was needed for "act of throwing overboard."
Middle English jetteson (n.) "act of throwing overboard" is from Anglo-French getteson, from Old French getaison "act of throwing (goods overboard)," especially to lighten a ship in distress, from Late Latin iactionem (nominative iactatio) "act of throwing," noun of action from past participle stem of iectare "toss about" (see jet (v.)). Related: Jettisoned.