Wiktionary

truant

English edit

WOTD – 31 January 2024

Pronunciation edit

Etymology 1 edit

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”),[1] from Old French truant, truand (“(adjective) beggarly; roguish; (noun) a beggar, vagabond; a rogue”) (modern French truand), probably of Celtic origin,[2] possibly from Gaulish *trugan, or from Breton truan (“wretched”), from Proto-Celtic *térh₁-tro-m, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *terh₁- (“to drill, pierce; to rub; to turn”).[3]

cognates

Adjective edit

truant (not comparable)

  1. Shirking or wandering from business or duty; straying; hence, idle; loitering.
    • c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke: […] (Second Quarto), London: […] I[ames] R[oberts] for N[icholas] L[ing] […], published 1604, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii], signature C, verso:
      Ham[let]. And vvhat in faith make you from VVittenberg? / Hora[tio]. A truant diſpoſition good my Lord.
    • 1649, J[ohn] Milton, “Upon the Ordinance against the Common-prayer Book”, in ΕΙΚΟΝΟΚΛΆΣΤΗΣ [Eikonoklástēs] […], London: […] Matthew Simmons, […], →OCLC, page 152:
      [W]ee are not to imitate them; nor to diſtruſt God in the removal of that Truant help to our Devotion, vvhich by him never vvas appointed.
    • 1697, Virgil, “The Third Book of the Georgics”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, page 117, lines 705–710:
      But vvhere thou ſeeſt a ſingle Sheep remain / In ſhades aloof, or couch'd upon the Plain; / Or liſtleſly to crop the tender Graſs; / Or late to lag behind, vvith truant pace; / Revenge the Crime; and take the Traytor's head, / E're in the faultleſs Flock the dire Contagion ſpread.
    • 1772, John Trumbull, “The Owl and the Sparrow. A Fable.”, in The Poetical Works of John Trumbull, […], volume II, Hartford, Conn.: […] Samuel G[riswold] Goodrich, by Lincoln & Stone, published 1820, →OCLC, page 149:
      In elder days, in Saturn's prime, / Ere baldness seized the head of Time, / While truant Jove, in infant pride, / Play'd barefoot on Olympus' side, / Each thing on earth had power to chatter, / And spoke the mother tongue of nature.
    • 1785, William Cowper, “Book I. The Sofa.”, in The Task, a Poem, […], London: […] J[oseph] Johnson;  […], →OCLC, page 7:
      [I] have loved the rural vvalk / O'er hills, through valleys, and by rivers brink, / E'er ſince a truant boy I paſs'd my bounds / T'enjoy a ramble on the banks of Thames.
    • 1791, [Erasmus Darwin], “Canto I”, in The Botanic Garden; a Poem, in Two Parts. […], London: J[oseph] Johnson, […], →OCLC, part I (The Economy of Vegetation), page 4, lines 53–54:
      Dovvn the ſteep ſlopes He led vvith modeſt ſkill / The vvilling pathvvay, and the truant rill, […]
    • 1791–1792 (published 1793), William Wordsworth, “Descriptive Sketches, Taken during a Pedestrian Tour among the Alps”, in Henry [Hope] Reed, editor, The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Philadelphia, Pa.: Hayes & Zell, […], published 1860, →OCLC, page 30, column 1:
      Me, lured by hope its sorrows to remove, / A heart that could not much itself approve / O'er Gallia's wastes of corn dejected led, / Her road elms rustling high above my head, / Or through her truant pathways' native charms, / By secret villages and lonely farms, […]
    • 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, “Prodigal’s Return”, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume I, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849, →OCLC, page 205:
      Indeed, calamity is welcome to women if they think it will bring truant affection home again: and if you have reduced your mistress to a crust, depend upon it that she won't repine, and only take a very little bit of it for herself, provided you will eat the remainder in her company.
    • 1910, Emerson Hough, “A Lady in Company”, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC, page 6:
      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.
  2. (specifically) Of a student: absent from school without permission.
    He didn’t graduate because he was chronically truant and didn’t have enough attendances to meet the requirement.
  3. (obsolete) Having no real substance; unimportant, vain, worthless.
Derived terms edit
Translations edit
idle; loitering — see idle

Noun edit

truant (plural truants)

  1. An idle or lazy person; an idler.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:idler
  2. (specifically) A student who is absent from school without permission; hence (figurative), a person who shirks or wanders from business or duty.
  3. (obsolete) 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.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:vagabond, Thesaurus:worthless person
Derived terms edit
Translations edit
idle or lazy person — see idler

Etymology 2 edit

From Middle English truaunten (“to obtain alms fraudulently; to behave like a rogue or scoundrel; to neglect a duty; to be idle or lazy”),[4] and then partly:

Verb edit

truant (third-person singular simple present truants, present participle truanting, simple past and past participle truanted)

  1. (intransitive) 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.
    The number of schoolchildren known to have truanted from this school has been unusually high.
  2. (transitive, obsolete) To idle away or waste (time).
Derived terms edit
Translations edit
of a student: to be absent from school without permission — see play truant

References edit

  1. ^ “?truaunt, adj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007; “truaunt, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
  2. ^ “truant, n. and adj.”, in OED Online  ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, December 2023; “truant, n. and adj.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
  3. ^ Roberts, Edward A. (2014) A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Spanish Language with Families of Words based on Indo-European Roots, Xlibris Corporation, →ISBN
  4. ^ “truaunten, v.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
  5. ^ “-en, suf.(3)”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
  6. ^ Compare “truant, v.”, in OED Online  ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, September 2023.

Further reading edit

Anagrams edit

Retrieved from "https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=truant&oldid=78210351"