Just somebody's relict

Tweet

We’ve just returned from a road trip to feed the canaries and cats that belong to a friend. On the way, we passed through West Dale, a locality that has a lovely old church and community hall and a big farming community. I’ll have photos of the buildings later but what I found really interesting were the gravestones in the churchyard, in particular one, part of which said ‘Richard Potts, relict of the late Alicia Potts, died 1916, aged 82 years.’ I can’t decipher the rest. The use of the word ‘relict’ intrigued me so off I went to Mr Google and found that, as a legal term, it means ‘widow’ or ‘widower. Other meanings (taken from the web) are: "A species that inhabits a much smaller geographic area than it did in the past, often because of environmental change" or "something that has survived; a remnant". I’m glad ‘relict’ is a real word but to me, it makes the person sound like a leftover.