dropout

Or drop-out

[drop-out]

noun

1. an act or instance of dropping out.

2. a student who withdraws before completing a course of instruction.

3. a student who withdraws from high school after having reached the legal age to do so.

4. a person who withdraws from established society, especially to pursue an alternate lifestyle.

5. a person who withdraws from a competition, job, task, etc..

   the first dropout from the presidential race.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

dropout

/ ˈdrɒpˌaʊt /

noun

1. a student who fails to complete a school or college course

2. a person who rejects conventional society

3. drop-out. rugby a drop kick taken by the defending team to restart play, as after a touchdown

4. drop-out. electronics a momentary loss of signal in a magnetic recording medium as a result of an imperfection in its magnetic coating

verb

1. to abandon or withdraw from (a school, social group, job, etc)

Word History and Origins

Origin of dropout¹

1925–30, noun use of verb phrase drop out

Example Sentences

Gordon Hall, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Oregon, explained that Asian Americans have high dropout rates after going to therapy.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

From Fortune 500 CEOs to college dropouts, everyone had a web-based business idea.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

The get-tough approach still has proponents, but critics argued that it increased the number of dropouts while providing too little benefit.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

It had no more side effects or study dropouts than the placebo pill received by the control participants.

Read more on Barron's

“Look at the dropout rates. Look at the depths of despair. Look at the issues around loneliness. Look at every critical category. It’s just blinking red lights for young men.”

Read more on Los Angeles Times