abdicate

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• intransitive verb To relinquish (power or responsibility) formally.
• intransitive verb To relinquish formally a high office or responsibility.

from The Century Dictionary.

• To give up, renounce, abandon, lay down, or withdraw from, as a right or claim, office, duties, dignity, authority, and the like, especially in a voluntary, public, or formal manner.
• To discard; cast away; take leave of: as, to abdicate one's mental faculties. In civil law, to disclaim and expel from a family, as a child; disinherit during lifetime: with a personal subject, as father, parent.
• To put away or expel; banish; renounce the authority of; dethrone; degrade.
• Synonyms To resign, renounce, give up, quit, vacate, relinquish, lay down, abandon, desert. (See list under abandon, v.)
• To renounce or give up something; abandon some claim; relinquish a right, power, or trust.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• intransitive verb To relinquish or renounce a throne, or other high office or dignity.
• transitive verb To surrender or relinquish, as sovereign power; to withdraw definitely from filling or exercising, as a high office, station, dignity.
• transitive verb To renounce; to relinquish; -- said of authority, a trust, duty, right, etc.
• transitive verb obsolete To reject; to cast off.
• transitive verb (Civil Law) To disclaim and expel from the family, as a father his child; to disown; to disinherit.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• verb give up, such as power, as of monarchs and emperors, or duties and obligations