Meaning

verb leave someone who needs or counts on you; leave in the lurch

originFrom Middle English forsaken (“to abandon, desert, repudiate, withdraw allegiance from”), from Old English forsacan (“to oppose; to give up, renounce; to decline, refuse”), from Proto-West Germanic *frasakan (“to forsake, renounce”). By surface analysis, for- + sake. Cognates include Saterland Frisian ferseeke (“to deny, refuse”), West Frisian fersaakje, Dutch verzaken (“to renounce, forsake”),…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0