Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun One who is absent without permission, especially from school.
- noun One who shirks work or duty.
- adjective Absent without permission, especially from school.
- adjective Idle, lazy, or neglectful.
- intransitive verb To be truant.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A vagabond; a vagrant; an idler.
- Idle; loitering; given to shirking duty or business, or attendance at some appointed time or place: especially noting children who absent themselves from school without leave.
- Characteristic of a truant; idle; loitering; wandering.
- To idle away time or shirk duty; play truant.
- To waste or idle away.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb rare To idle away; to waste.
- noun One who stays away from business or any duty; especially, one who stays out of school without leave; an idler; a loiterer; a shirk.
- noun to stray away; to loiter; especially, to stay out of school without leave.
- adjective Wandering from business or duty; loitering; idle, and shirking duty.
- intransitive verb To idle away time; to loiter, or wander; to play the truant.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Describing one who is truant, absent without permission, especially from school.
- noun One who is
absent withoutpermission , especially fromschool . - verb intransitive To
play truant . - verb transitive To
idle away; towaste .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun someone who shirks duty
- adjective absent without permission
- noun one who is absent from school without permission
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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I called the truant officer, and now the kids' school is supplying them with food and cell phones.
Kristin Wilson Keppler: What Children Can Learn From Egypt Kristin Wilson Keppler 2011
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I called the truant officer, and now the kids' school is supplying them with food and cell phones.
Kristin Wilson Keppler: What Children Can Learn From Egypt Kristin Wilson Keppler 2011
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The girls hurried out before the employees had a chance to call the truant officer and ran down the street.
Arcana Magi Zero - v.3: It's So Wonderful, It's So Beautiful 2009
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But still his heart failed; for he could not recall his truant thoughts from the wolf-like
Little Folks A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) Various
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It'll be many a day I shall be called truant, I reckon.
Little Folks A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) Various
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The truant was a pretty, white-nosed creature, a special pet of his master's, with great brown, confiding eyes, and ample ears, and Amberley had named him Simon.
Peak and Prairie From a Colorado Sketch-book Anna Fuller 1884
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Then the Kentish king, admonished by a dream of the archbishop's, made submission, recalled the truant bishops, and restored Justus to
Early Britain Anglo-Saxon Britain Grant Allen 1873
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Before the pleasant afternoon closed, he had gained permission to call the truant Letty, and she primmed her rosy lips as he taught her to say Will.
The Chequers Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in a Loafer's Diary James Runciman 1871
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It goes, however, slower and slower, and curving its journey less and less, until at last its motion in remote obscurity is again so sluggish, that the sun's attraction is once more predominant, and able to recall the truant towards its realms of light.
Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 Various 1836
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Roman Catholic schoolgirl labelled 'truant' for refusing to wear headscarf on mosque trip
Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph Telegraph Staff 2011
rolig commented on the word truant
I love the older sense of truant, as "stray, displaced, wandering", used by George Eliot in this passage from The Mill on the Floss, describing the Red Deeps, an area of hollows and hills where Maggie Tulliver enjoyed taking her walks. The place, she says, had a charm for Maggie:
especially in summer, when she could sit in the grassy hollow under the shadow of a branching ash, stooping aslant from the steep above her, and listen to the hum of insects, like tiniest bells on the garment of Silence, or see the sunlight piercing the distant boughs, as if to chase and drive home the truant heavenly blue of the wild hyacinths.
— George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (1860), Book V, chap. 1, "In the Red Deeps"
December 31, 2012