Meaning of truant in English

truant

noun

/ˈtruː.ənt/ uk

/ˈtruː.ənt/

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[ C ]

a child who is regularly absent from school without permission:

Police reports showed that the vast majority of crime committed by children was carried out by truants.

play truant UK (US usually play hooky)

to be regularly absent from school without permission:

play truant from school Most parents are horrified when they discover their children have been playing truant from school.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Students & pupils

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You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Not going to school

truant

verb [ I ]

/ˈtruː.ənt/ uk

/ˈtruː.ənt/

Children who truant are regularly absent from school, usually while pretending to their parents that they have gone to school:

You'll fail all your exams if you carry on truanting.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Not going to school

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(Definition of truant from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

truant | Intermediate English

truant

noun [ C ]

/ˈtru·ənt/

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someone who is absent from school without permission

truancy

noun [ U ] us

/ˈtru·ən·si/

Truancy is a serious problem in many schools.

(Definition of truant from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of truant

truant

They quickly learned that the stereotype of the truant who thumbs his nose at school fit very few of the students they met.

From The Seattle Times

Corona was a noncertified staff member who worked with students who were in danger of becoming chronically truant, officials said.

From Chicago Daily Herald

But anyway, no - but no truant officer ever showed up.

From NPR

There were no historical allusions either -- at least not direct ones -- from a man who is defiantly truant in his knowledge of history.

From New York Times

It's not just high schoolers who are truant, the study found.

From OregonLive.com

That year, about 6,200 students were considered habitually truant, meaning that they were out at least 20 percent of the time.

From Baltimore Sun

Kids living in poverty are more likely to be truant, to fail standardized reading and math tests, and to eventually drop out of school.

From The Plain Dealer - cleveland.com

These absentee students aren't all truants, willfully skipping school.

From Baltimore Sun

With that change, 80 percent of the district's chronically truant students never ended up in courtrooms.

From The Seattle Times

Corona was a truancy liaison, a noncertified staff member who worked with students who are in danger of becoming chronically truant, district officials said.

From Chicago Tribune

He's not truant, he's late to school sometimes, that's about it.

From Chicago Tribune

The schools' reaction was, instead of offering services, they went after truants.

From The Atlantic

If we start a habit of lollygagging in the morning, my son will technically be a truant.

From San Francisco Chronicle

So many public school districts have launched campaigns to reduce all absences, not just those serious enough to warrant a home visit from a truant officer.

From Huffington Post

But some school administrators worry that adopting more sympathetic policies toward students who miss school won't work for the most chronically, and some say willfully, truant kids.

From Huffington Post

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

What is the pronunciation of truant?