drop out

See also: dropout and drop-out

English

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Verb

drop out (third-person singular simple present drops out, present participle dropping out, simple past and past participle dropped out)

1. (idiomatic) To leave (school, a race, etc.) prematurely and voluntarily.

   Nothing went well in high school, so he dropped out.

   • 2015, Aaron Sorkin, Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs, spoken by Steve Jobs (Michael Fassbender):

     He [Bill Gates] dropped out of a better school than I dropped out of.

   • 2017 July 23, Brandon Nowalk, “The great game begins with a bang on Game Of Thrones (newbies)”, in The Onion AV Club‎^[1]:

     After all this time, the little girl who watched her father get beheaded, who was captured and impressed as her enemy’s servant, who was captured again and taken to the site of her family’s massacre, who enrolled at assassin school, who went blind, who dropped out to pursue vengeance, the woman who endured all that by focusing on her hit list can be swayed from her course by the prospect of her family and her home.

   • 2023 November 18, Blake Montgomery, Dani Anguiano, “OpenAI fires co-founder and CEO Sam Altman for allegedly lying to company board”, in The Guardian‎^[2], →ISSN:

     Altman has long been viewed as a Silicon Valley wunderkind. In the tradition of other tech founders before him, Altman dropped out of Stanford in 2005 to launch his social-networking app, Loopt, which he later sold for $43m.

2. To opt out of conventional society.
3. (of sound, electronic signal, etc.) To be lost or momentarily interrupted.

   I can't make phone calls because the line keeps dropping out.

4. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see drop,‎ out.
   • 1921 June, Margery Williams, “The Velveteen Rabbit: Or How Toys Become Real”, in Harper’s Bazar, volume LVI, number 6 (2504 overall), New York, N.Y.: International Magazine Company, →ISSN, →OCLC:

     Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.

5. (intransitive, Of a trapdoor or similar) To give way under someone.

   Synonym: fall out

   The board he was walking on dropped out.

6. (intransitive, Of the ground, floor, snow, etc., or figuratively, a worldview or foundation) To cause someone to slip and/or fall down.

   Synonym: fall out

   The ground dropped out from under him.

   When she left him, his world dropped out beneath him.

7. (transitive, slang) To dismiss, break up with or abandon (someone).

Usage notes

• Often used with of: “drop out of the race”

Derived terms

• drop-in/drop-out
• tune in, turn on, drop out

Related terms

• drop
• drop-out, dropout

Translations

to prematurely leave an occasion or event

• Finnish: lähteä kesken pois (event), jättää kesken, keskeyttää (fi) (e.g. studies)
• Hungarian: otthagy (hu), félbehagy (hu) (from an event), lemorzsolódik (hu), kimarad (hu) (from studies)
• Maori: makere, whakamakere

to opt out of conventional society

• Finnish: jättäytyä (fi) (+ elative)
• German: aussteigen (de)
• Spanish: desertar (es), defeccionar (es), apostatar (es), abjurar (es)

See also

• flunk out

Anagrams

• outdrop