truant · adj — shirking or wandering from business or duty; straying; hence, idle; loitering. It carries an Arena rating of 1769, earned across 47 head-to-head judged battles.
Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, truant ranks #1,154 of 17,187 for Most Malleable Words, #1,310 of 17,197 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #1,943 of 17,201 for Funniest Words, #4,922 of 17,188 for Words That Escaped Their Books.
truant is pronounced /ˈtɹuːənt/.
Why “truant” is a great word
TRUANT — [Adjective / Noun] As an adjective: absent from school or duty without permission; as a noun: a person, especially a student, who is so absent. From Middle English truant, from Old French truant ("beggar, rogue"), probably of Celtic origin, from Gaulish *trugan or Breton truan ("wretched"), from Proto-Celtic *taratrom, from Proto-Indo-European *terh₁- ("to drill, pierce, rub, turn"). First attested c. 1200. Unlike an "absentee," a neutral term for one who is not present, or a "vagrant," which describes a rootless wanderer, a truant is branded by the willful evasion of a specific, sanctioned duty. It is the hollow ring of an empty desk in a sunlit classroom, the illicit quiet of a park bench at 10 a.m., and the palpable warmth of sun on your back while others are confined indoors—a small, deliberate rent in the fabric of expected order, proving that even obligation has its geography, and to be lost from one place is, briefly, to be found in another.
❧ Essay by Lexicurio’s AI · definition, etymology & citations from published sources
Etymology
The adjective and noun are derived from Middle English truant, truand, truaund (“(adjective) idle; tending to vagrancy (uncertain; may be a use of the noun); (noun) beggar; mendicant friar; vagrant, wanderer; worthless person, rogue, scoundrel; one who is absent without leave, truant; one who shirks duties”), from Old French truant, truand (“(adjective) beggarly; roguish; (noun) a beggar, vagabond; a rogue”) (modern French truand), probably of Celtic origin, possibly from Gaulish *trugan, or from Breton truan (“wretched”), from Proto-Celtic *taratrom, from Proto-Indo-European *térh₁-tro-m, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *terh₁- (“to drill, pierce; to rub; to turn”). Cognates * Breton truc (“beggar”) * Irish trogán, trogha (“destitute”) * Middle Dutch trawant, trouwant, truwant * Occit
adj
- Shirking or wandering from business or duty; straying; hence, idle; loitering.
- Of a student: absent from school without permission.e.g.“He didn’t graduate because he was chronically truant and didn’t have enough attendances to meet the requirement.”
- Having no real substance; unimportant, vain, worthless.
noun
- An idle or lazy person; an idler.
- A student who is absent from school without permission; hence (figurative), a person who shirks or wanders from business or duty.
- Synonym of sturdy beggar (“a person who was fit and able to work, but lived as a beggar or vagrant instead”); hence, a worthless person; a rogue, a scoundrel.
verb
- Also used with the impersonal pronoun it (dated): to shirk or wander from business or duty; (specifically) of a student: to be absent from school without permission; to play truant.e.g.“The number of schoolchildren known to have truanted from this school has been unusually high.”
- To idle away or waste (time).e.g.“I dare not be the Author / Of trevvanting the time then, neither vvill I.” — c. 1635–1636 (date written), Iohn Ford [i.e., John Ford], The Fancies, Chast and Noble: […], London: […] E[lizabeth] P[urslowe] for Henry Seile, […], published 1638, →OCLC, Act III, page 45:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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