dropout
Americannoun
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an act or instance of dropping out.
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a student who withdraws before completing a course of instruction.
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a student who withdraws from high school after having reached the legal age to do so.
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a person who withdraws from established society, especially to pursue an alternate lifestyle.
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a person who withdraws from a competition, job, task, etc..
the first dropout from the presidential race.
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Rugby. a drop kick made by a defending team from within its own 25-yard (23-meter) line as a result of a touchdown or of the ball's having touched or gone outside of a touch-in-goal line or the dead-ball line.
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Also called highlight halftone. Printing, Photography. a halftone negative or plate in which dots have been eliminated from highlights by continued etching, burning in, opaquing, or the like.
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Also called dropout error. the loss of portions of the information on a recorded magnetic tape due to contamination of the magnetic medium or poor contact with the tape heads.
noun
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a student who fails to complete a school or college course
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a person who rejects conventional society
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drop-out. rugby a drop kick taken by the defending team to restart play, as after a touchdown
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drop-out. electronics a momentary loss of signal in a magnetic recording medium as a result of an imperfection in its magnetic coating
verb
Etymology
Origin of dropout
1925–30, noun use of verb phrase drop out
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Not surprisingly, audio dropouts were the most problematic—after all, if you can’t hear what someone has to say, it’s hard to support their candidacy.
The college dropout had made a name for himself on social media by offering get-rich-quick advice and self-help courses.
“Me? You really want a high school dropout to be your teacher?”
From Literature
They all felt like Ivy League professors and I was a college dropout; I felt like I so didn’t belong there.
From Los Angeles Times
"Findings from my research showed that impostorism predicted poorer overall mental health, greater burnout, and increased consideration of dropout among graduate women in STEM," she said.
From Science Daily
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
