noun
- 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.
noun
- 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
verb drop out (intr, adverb often foll by of)
- to abandon or withdraw from (a school, social group, job, etc)
“one who ‘drops out’ of something,” 1930, from drop (v.) + out (adv.). As a phrase, drop out “withdraw” is recorded from 1550s.