1An object surviving from an earlier time, especially one of historical or sentimental interest.

1. 1.1 A part of a deceased holy person's body or belongings kept as an object of reverence.
   Example sentencesExamples

   • Luther lived at a time when the bible was only available in Latin, when the Church exploited people by selling holy relics for salvation.
   • It is exhilarating to visit these monasteries, as also the Buddhist Museum which has Buddhist relics excavated from various parts of India.
   • Indeed, there is a relic in the historical museum of the University of Lund which is said to be a piece of the tree under which the Holy Family rested on their famous journey.
   • This Sunday, October 26, a record number of people are expected at Knock Shrine when the relics of Mother Teresa will arrive.
   • First degree relics are remains of a saint's body or any of their body parts.
   • The doctors who were tending to the Pope during his final hours are auctioning off a sample of the Pope's blood as a holy relic.
   • The palace and the king also attracted many holy relics whose number and quality bestowed prestige and authority on their owner.
   • Their great old houses overflow with rough medieval furniture, threadbare tapestries and religious relics worn smooth by the touch of generations.
   • He could invoke saints and employ relics, sprinkle holy water and exorcise the devil.
   • With the canonisation of the Confessor in 1161, his regalia gained the status of holy relics, further increasing the veneration with which they were regarded.
   • The reverence shown for relics has roots in the celebration of the Eucharist over the graves of the first Christian martyrs.
   • The holy relic is believed to protect the 25 sq. km. former Portuguese colony, on the doorstep of China, from natural disasters.
   • Instead of being regarded with panic or horror, these relics are reverenced.
   • The violence he remembered was no local riot: it was part of a chain of violence that had been set off by the theft of a holy relic from the Hazrat Bal mosque in 1964.
   • Pilgrimages to the sites of miracles and holy relics grew ever more popular, and the number of such places increased.
   • He had a profoundly religious nature and built the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, to house holy relics brought from Constantinople.
   • These holy relics were keenly sought after as the people saw their purchase as a way of pleasing God.
   • They apparently have holy relics stored in the crypt.
   • People have a long history of conserving paintings, buildings and religious relics.
   • Here too were the holy relics of colonial Ireland passing through closure into our new present.

   Synonyms

   remains, body parts, bones
2. 1.2 An object, custom, or belief that has survived from an earlier time but is now outmoded.
   individualized computer programming and time-sharing would become expensive relics

   Example sentencesExamples

   • I hope also to show that perennial philosophy is not an historical relic, a cast-off from an alien time, fit only for the cramped exegesis of modern historians of ideas.
   • But in election year 2004, the film views like a historical relic.
   • Some historians indicated that the four western Kavango groups of today are most probably some of the oldest relics of the earliest inhabitants of central Africa.
   • They are relics of an earlier, darkly seductive era.
   • The kings and the Council of Elders are relics of an archaic system.
   • The award is something of a quaint relic - freemen have the right to graze sheep on common ground.
   • Needless to say, with the rapid improvements being made in DLP technology, in a few years both color breakup and motion artifacts will likely be historical relics.
   • Some worry that after 96 years its members have become disengaged, its methods anachronistic relics of 1960s protest.
   • To them, Sonny was an anachronism, a relic from a primitive time when the locomotive was technology's cutting edge.
   • No longer a ‘basic sauce’, the demi-glace is now considered to be a relic of an archaic form of cookery referred to respectfully as cuisine classique but no longer practised.
   • Coombs was a relic of an earlier, gentler time, when the privacy of public officials (even politicians) was normally regarded as sacrosanct.
   • He and his type would be regarded as living fossils, relics of an earlier era.
   • What is so important about her is that even at the age of 92, she is no relic of the early twentieth century but continues to be a prolific commentator on her world.
   • In Scotland, however, the old code remained legal and came to be viewed simultaneously as a relic of outmoded ways of life and as a sign of modernity.
   • But, somehow, those posters seemed past it, (like himself) relics of an earlier decade.
   • The Italian urban landscape was filled with shrines, relics, icons, and various forms of religious theatre that brought the holy directly into the lives of people.
   • It, in a sense, is a relic of an earlier age of procedure.
   • Likewise, when talkies replaced silent movies, many stars of the earlier era were unable to adapt and became human relics.
   • The 65,000-square-foot structure was a relic of the 1970s, designed to house the post office's old computer system.
   • Thirty years from now the big university campuses will be relics.
3. 1.3relics All that is left of something.
   relics of a lost civilization

   Example sentencesExamples

   • Rationally speaking, it is one of a small family of great universal museums, the huge monster museums which are relics of the imperial period of history.
   • We imitated the West in creating museums to house the relics of our past, whereas traditionally we had lived with our past in our daily present.
   • No longer living beings, they stare out at us as preserved relics from a lost time.
   • Among the treasured relics of Bill's Air Force sporting career is a timber trophy, which he refers to as his ‘big egg cup’.
   • Trees grow out of the windows and rotted roofs of stately old brick homes, relics of bygone opulence.
   • There is no need to collect relics of his life.
   • There were far fewer rich private carriages in the streets, and any number of bits of furniture or other battered relics of aristocratic or pious living could be bought from street dealers.
   • And today, the United Nations has declared cities that have preserved relics of that era as World Heritage Sites.
   • But you can also see it in the hint of a new cinema born from the relics of its own history.