vestige

/ˈvestɪdʒ/ (bre, ipa) · [vˈɛstɪdʒ] /ˈvestɪdʒ/ (ame, ipa) · [vˈɛstɪdʒ] /ˈve-stij How to pronounce vestige (audio)/ (ame, mw)

vestige — noun

  • vestigesingular
  • vestigesplural

1. a very small piece, amount, or sign left behind when most of a thing, system, or

1.名詞C1
釋義

a very small piece, amount, or sign left behind when most of a thing, system, or tradition has disappeared — for example, a broken tower that is all that survives of an old castle, or a custom that people still follow without remembering why it started.

例句

The crumbling watchtower is the last vestige of the castle that stood here for centuries.

collocation: last vestige of

After the earthquake, not a single vestige of the old town square remained.

negative pattern: not a vestige of

同義詞
  • trace

    more common in everyday speech; a trace can be any very small amount, while a vestige always implies survival from a larger whole

  • remnant

    focuses on a physical leftover piece; remnant is more concrete than vestige, which can also refer to abstract or symbolic survivals

  • relic

    implies something valued or venerated from the past, like a historical object; relic has a more positive or respectful tone than vestige

反義詞
  • whole

    the complete thing that the vestige once belonged to

  • bulk

    the main or largest part, in contrast to the tiny remaining fragment

文法句型

not a vestige of [something]

last vestige of [something]

用法筆記

Frequently appears in negative constructions (not a vestige of) to emphasise that absolutely nothing of something remains. In everyday conversation, trace or sign are more common than vestige, which sounds literary or formal.

常見錯誤

❌I ate the last vestige of bread.
✅I ate the last piece of bread.
💡'vestige' is not used for ordinary small amounts of food or everyday objects; it describes something left from a larger, older, or more important whole.
❌There was a vestige of milk in the fridge.
✅There was a small amount of milk in the fridge.
💡'vestige' implies historical or symbolic survival, not a random small quantity.

2. a body part in a living creature that no longer performs a useful function becau

2.名詞C2
釋義

a body part in a living creature that no longer performs a useful function because it has become smaller over many generations of evolution — for example, the human appendix, the tailbone, or the tiny leg bones found inside some snakes.

例句

The human appendix is a vestige of an organ that helped our distant ancestors digest tough plant material.

definitional: [body part] is a vestige of [its ancestral function]

Whales still carry small leg bones deep inside their bodies — vestiges of when their ancestors walked on land.

同義詞
  • rudiment

    a formal technical term for an undeveloped or early-stage body part; rudiment can also mean the first beginning of something, while vestige always points backward to a lost past

文法句型

vestige of [ancestor's body part]

[body part] is a vestige

用法筆記

In biological writing, the adjective vestigial (e.g. 'a vestigial organ') is far more common than the noun vestige. The noun tends to appear in explanatory contexts where a specific structure is named as a surviving trace of an ancestor's anatomy.