Jettison is a verb that means to abandon or discard something useless.

Our word of the day comes from the Latin word Jactare (yack TAR ay) which means ‘to throw.’ Jettison emerged as an English word in the mid 19th century and means to ‘to throw away.’

I got about halfway through my hike before I realized I’d have to jettison my backpack. It had become so frail and useless that I simply had to abandon it.