Truant

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -ÊŠÉ™nt

Origin

From Middle English truant, truand, trewande, trowant (= Middle Dutch trouwant, trawant, truwant), from Old French truand, truant ("a vagabond, beggar, rogue", also "beggarly, roguish"), of origin, perhaps from Gaulish *trugan, or from Breton truan. Cognate with Scottish Gaelic truaghan, Irish trogha ("destitute"), trogán, Breton truc ("beggar"), Welsh tru.

Full definition of truant

Adjective

1. Absent without permission, especially from school.
   He didn't graduate because he was chronically truant and didn't have enough attendances to meet the requirement.
2. Wandering from business or duty; straying; loitering; idle, and shirking duty.
   A truant fly can get in your eye.
• 1603+, William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2A truant disposition, good my lord.
• 1772, John Trumbull, The Owl and the Sparrow, p.149While truant Jove, in infant pride,
  Play'd barefoot on Olympus' side.
• 1910, Emerson Hough, The Purchase Price Chapter 1, Serene, smiling, enigmatic, she faced him with no fear whatever showing in her dark eyes....She put back a truant curl from her forehead where it had sought egress to the world, and looked him full in the face now, drawing a deep breath which caused the round of her bosom to lift the lace at her throat.

Derived terms

• truant officer

Noun

1. One who is absent without permission, especially from school.

Derived terms

• play truant

Verb

1. (intransitive) To play truant.the number of schoolchildren known to have truanted
2. (transitive) To idle away; to waste.
• FordI dare not be the author
  Of truanting the time.
3. To idle away time.
• LowellBy this means they lost their time and truanted on the fundamental grounds of saving knowledge.