Drop out or dropout?
drop out is a verb meaning “To leave (school, a race, etc.) prematurely and voluntarily”; dropout is a noun meaning “Someone who has left an educational institution without completing the course”. Use drop out as a verb and dropout as a noun. drop out is written as two words and dropout as one word; they are used differently.
What is the difference between drop out and dropout?
| drop out | dropout | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | verb, noun | noun |
| Meaning | To leave (school, a race, etc.) prematurely and voluntarily To opt out of conventional society | Someone who has left an educational institution without completing the course Someone who has opted out of conventional society |
| Example | Nothing went well in high school, so he dropped out | The politicians of the world are mere political university dropouts |
| Forms | none | dropouts |
| Pronunciation | not recorded | not recorded |
| In writing | not counted (the list counts single words) | 1.2 times per million words |
Sources: drop out and dropout in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of drop out and dropout
drop out
- 1
To leave (school, a race, etc.) prematurely and voluntarily
Nothing went well in high school, so he dropped out
- 2
Alternative spelling of dropout
- 3
To opt out of conventional society
- 4
To be lost or momentarily interrupted
I can't make phone calls because the line keeps dropping out
- 5
Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see drop, out
- 6
To give way under someone
The board he was walking on dropped out
- 7
To cause someone to slip and/or fall down
The ground dropped out from under him
- 8
slangTo dismiss, break up with or abandon (someone)
dropout
- 1
Someone who has left an educational institution without completing the course
The politicians of the world are mere political university dropouts
- 2
Someone who has opted out of conventional society
- 3
One who suddenly leaves anything, or the act of doing so
- 4
The slot in the frame that accepts the axles of the wheels
- 5
A damaged portion of a tape or disk, causing a brief omission of audio, video, or data
- 6
Momentary loss of an electronic signal
- 7
A technique for regularizing a neural network by discarding a random subset of its units
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, drop out or dropout?
drop out is a phrase, which the list of single words does not count; dropout 1.2 times per million words.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).