dropout
or drop-out
[drop-out]
- an act or instance of dropping out.
- a student who withdraws before completing a course of instruction.
- a student who withdraws from high school after having reached the legal age to do so.
- a person who withdraws from established society, especially to pursue an alternate lifestyle.
- a person who withdraws from a competition, job, task, etc.: the first dropout from the presidential race.
- 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.
- Also called highlight halftone. a halftone negative or plate in which dots have been eliminated from highlights by continued etching, burning in, opaquing, or the like.
- 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.
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Origin of dropout
1925–30, Americanism; noun use of verb phrase drop out
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for dropout
Contemporary Examples
He calls Kline the champion of for-profit colleges, which have a dropout rate “worse than celebrity rehab.”
The dropout rate of Arab students at the Technion, Israel's technology institute, went from 28 percent to 12 percent.
He and (dropout) Michele Bachmann added up to about 14 percent in these polls.
By replacing each team with a famous alumnus (or dropout), filling out a bracket has never been easier.
It sounds drastic,” says Powell, “but literally the future of our nation is at stake if we do not correct the dropout rate.
Historical Examples
The economy absorbed the majority of the dropout population.
The Civilization of IlliteracyMihai Nadin
dropout
- a student who fails to complete a school or college course
- a person who rejects conventional society
- drop-out rugby a drop kick taken by the defending team to restart play, as after a touchdown
- drop-out electronics a momentary loss of signal in a magnetic recording medium as a result of an imperfection in its magnetic coating
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- to abandon or withdraw from (a school, social group, job, etc)
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Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for dropout
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper