graduate

American  

[graj-oo-it, -eyt, graj-oo-eyt] / ˈgrædʒ u ɪt, -ˌeɪt, ˈgrædʒ uˌeɪt /

noun

• graduates
  plural

1. a person who has received a degree or diploma on completing a course of study, as in a university, college, or school.

2. a student who holds the bachelor's or the first professional degree and is studying for an advanced degree.

3. a graduated cylinder, used for measuring.

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adjective

1. of, relating to, or involved in academic study beyond the first or bachelor's degree.

   graduate courses in business; a graduate student.

2. having an academic degree or diploma.

   a graduate engineer.

verb (used without object)

• graduates,
  present (3rd person singular)
• graduated,
  past participle,  past
• graduating
  present participle

1. to receive a degree or diploma on completing a course of study (often followed byfrom ).

   She graduated from college in 1985.

2. to pass by degrees; change gradually.

verb (used with object)

• graduates,
  present (3rd person singular)
• graduated,
  past participle,  past
• graduating
  present participle

1. to confer a degree upon, or to grant a diploma to, at the close of a course of study, as in a university, college, or school.

   Cornell graduated eighty students with honors.

2. Informal. to receive a degree or diploma from.

   She graduated college in 1950.

3. to arrange in grades or gradations; establish gradation in.

4. to divide into or mark with degrees or other divisions, as the scale of a thermometer.

graduate British  

noun

1. 1. a person who has been awarded a first degree from a university or college

   2. ( as modifier )

      a graduate profession

2. a student who has completed a course of studies at a high school and received a diploma

3. a container, such as a flask, marked to indicate its capacity

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verb

1. to receive or cause to receive a degree or diploma

2. (tr) to confer a degree, diploma, etc upon

3. (tr) to mark (a thermometer, flask, etc) with units of measurement; calibrate

4. (tr) to arrange or sort into groups according to type, quality, etc

5. to change by degrees (from something to something else)

Usage

In the sense “to receive a degree or diploma” graduate followed by from is the most common construction today: Her daughter graduated from Yale in 1981. The passive form was graduated from, formerly insisted upon as the only correct pattern, has decreased in use and occurs infrequently today: My husband was graduated from West Point last year. Even though it is condemned by some as nonstandard, the use of graduate as a transitive verb meaning “to receive a degree or diploma from” is increasing in frequency in both speech and writing: The twins graduated high school in 1974.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• graduator
  noun
• nongraduate
  noun
• supergraduate
  noun
• ungraduating
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• graduates
  plural

Participles

• graduating
  present
• graduated
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• graduate
  simple
• graduates
  simple
• have graduated
  perfect
• has graduated
  perfect
• am graduating
  progressive
• are graduating
  progressive
• is graduating
  progressive
• have been graduating
  perfect progressive
• has been graduating
  perfect progressive

Past

• graduated
  simple
• had graduated
  perfect
• was graduating
  progressive
• were graduating
  progressive
• had been graduating
  perfect progressive

Future

• will graduate
  simple
• will have graduated
  perfect
• will be graduating
  progressive
• will have been graduating
  perfect progressive

Etymology

Origin of graduate

1375–1425; late Middle English < Medieval Latin graduātus (past participle of graduāre ), equivalent to grad ( us ) grade, step + -u- thematic vowel + -ātus -ate ¹

Explanation

To graduate means to successfully complete your schooling, to become "a graduate." When you graduate from high school, you become a high school graduate and congratulations are in order. A graduate is someone who has received a degree from a school. As a verb graduate refers to the act of receiving this degree “I plan to graduate from college in the spring,” or the act of giving a degree “I want to graduate all of my students.” In a scientific sense, graduate can mean to calibrate for fine adjustments. To make a thermometer, you have to graduate it by degrees so it displays a range of temperatures.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

graduate graduates graduated graduating

Despite his generosity to Cambridge, Rokos is an Oxford graduate, having studied mathematics at Pembroke College.

From BBC ● Sep. 8, 2026

Her sister Mursal, a 24-year-old recent law school graduate, had frustratingly received her first request to interview for a legal assistant job on the very day Kabul fell.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 6, 2026

She found Finch after a tough semester of graduate school where she felt like she was “falling apart as a person.”

From Slate ● Sep. 6, 2026

The research was led by recent doctoral graduate Sasha Bishop in collaboration with University of Toronto researcher John Stinchcombe.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 4, 2026

She got off work as a barista at three and had school—now graduate school—at four fifteen.

From "Look Both Ways" by Jason Reynolds

On Tuesday many online posted comments critical of the pay raise, saying it was "tone deaf" given current concerns about retrenchments, jobs for fresh graduates and inflation.

From BBC ● Sep. 8, 2026

Xingyu recruited 440 new graduates from the class of 2026, then fired 107 of them in early August after barely more than a month on the job.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 7, 2026

If I—a single woman who lives alone and works from home—don’t have the luxury of me time, I cannot fathom what families, gig workers, and recent college graduates must endure.

From Slate ● Sep. 6, 2026

More revealing and to your point about education: 81% of college graduates compared with 39% of adults with no college education have a retirement-savings plan.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 4, 2026

Nowadays tens of thousands of university graduates do, and many millions of people are at least familiar with the idea.

From "A Brief History of Time: And Other Essays" by Stephen Hawking

Born in Shanghai in 1937, Tung graduated with a mechanical engineering degree from Liverpool University in the UK before moving to the US, where he worked at General Electric for almost a decade.

From BBC ● Sep. 9, 2026

Clark, 23, graduated with a business degree from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte last year.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 8, 2026

Steven, Allan’s only son, had just graduated from Vanderbilt University with a degree in political science.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 5, 2026

On Monday, a 20-year-old Haitian immigrant named Pierre Damas Bel, who graduated from high school with honors in May, walked into traffic on I-70 in Springfield highway and was killed.

From Salon ● Sep. 3, 2026

Fabricius was born on 20 May 1537, in the town of Aquapendente, and graduated from Padua in 1559.

From "The Scientists" by John Gribbin

Walter hardly stood out in his graduating class of about 350 students.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 5, 2026

Four states — California, Delaware, Colorado and Hawaii — are now mandating that students take a semester-long personal-finance course before graduating.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 4, 2026

Community colleges with strong track records in graduating and transferring students would be allowed to offer more new bachelor’s degrees than colleges with weaker records.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 1, 2026

Since graduating from Columbia University in 2021 as the class valedictorian at age 19, Leopold Aschenbrenner has worked his way into the upper echelons of technology.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 30, 2026

Despite everything, I am still graduating in June and entering college in August.

From "The Freedom Writers Diary" by The Freedom Writers

Related Words

• alum
• alumna
• alumnus
• doctor
• grad
• recipient