truant
Part of speech: adj
noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
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
* Occitan truan
* Portuguese truão
* Scottish Gaelic trudanach (“vagabond”), truaghan (“wretched”)
* Spanish truhan
* Welsh tru, truan (“wretched”)
Inflected forms:
form: truants
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: truants
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: truanting
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: truanted
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: truanted
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: Shirking or wandering from business or duty; straying; hence, idle; loitering.
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
examples: Ham[let]. And vvhat in faith make you from VVittenberg? / Hora[tio]. A truant diſpoſition good my Lord.
[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.
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.
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.
[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.
Dovvn the ſteep ſlopes He led vvith modeſt ſkill / The vvilling pathvvay, and the truant rill, […]
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, […]
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.
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.
gloss: Of a student: absent from school without permission.
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
specifically
examples: He didn’t graduate because he was chronically truant and didn’t have enough attendances to meet the requirement.
[…] I fell desperately in love with a little daughter of the squire's about twelve years of age. This freak of fancy made me more truant from my studies than ever.
gloss: Having no real substance; unimportant, vain, worthless.
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
obsolete
gloss: An idle or lazy person; an idler.
pos: noun
examples: For my part I may ſpeake it to my ſhame, / I haue a truant beene to Chiualrie, […]
You loiter, vvhile the Spoils are born avvay: / Our Ships are laden vvith the Trojan Store, / And you like Truants come too late aſhore.
gloss: A student who is absent from school without permission; hence (figurative), a person who shirks or wanders from business or duty.
pos: noun
tags: specifically
examples: [S]ince I pluckt Geeſe, plaide Trevvant, and vvhipt Top, I knevv not vvhat 'tvvas to be beaten, till lately.
[…] I knovve you are no truant, / But vvhat is your affaire in Elſonoure?
The village maſter taught his little ſchool; / A man ſevere he vvas, and ſtern to vievv, / I knevv him vvell, and every truant knevv; […]
gloss: 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.
pos: noun
tags: obsolete
examples: Hang him truant, theres no true drop of bloud in him to be truly toucht vvith loue, if he be ſadde, he vvantes money.
gloss: 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.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: The number of schoolchildren known to have truanted from this school has been unusually high.
VVhat made the Gods ſo often to trevvant from Heauen & mych [much] héere on earth, but beautie?
VVhat ſimple thiefe brags of his ovvne attaine? / 'Tis double vvrong, to truant vvith your bed, / And let her read it in thy lookes at boord: […]
By this means they loſt their time, and truanted in the fundamentall grounds of ſaving knovvledge, […]
If in a dark buſineſſe vve perceive God to guide us by the lantern of his providence, it is good to follovv the light cloſe, leſt vve loſe it by our lagging behind. He [Eliezer] vvill not truant it novv in the afternoon, but vvith convenient ſpeed returns to Abraham, vvho onely vvas vvorthy of ſuch a Servant, vvho onely vvas vvorthy of ſuch a Maſter.
Thou Truantest much, and art very idle, which are moſt pernicious things.
Her good angel is gone a journey: Is truanting at leaſt.
gloss: To idle away or waste (time).
pos: verb
tags: obsolete
transitive
examples: I dare not be the Author / Of trevvanting the time then, neither vvill I.
Derived words: trivant
truantness
play truant
truancy
truantism
truantlike
truantly
truant officer
truantry
truant school
truantship
truanting
Translations: