drop out

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drop out (third-person singular simple present drops out, present participle dropping out, simple past and past participle dropped out)

1. (idiomatic) To leave (school, a race, etc.) prematurely and voluntarily.

   Nothing went well in high school, so he dropped out.

   • 2017 July 23, Brandon Nowalk, “The great game begins with a bang on Game Of Thrones (newbies)”, in The Onion AV Club‎:

     After all this time, the little girl who watched her father get beheaded, who was captured and impressed as her enemy’s servant, who was captured again and taken to the site of her family’s massacre, who enrolled at assassin school, who went blind, who dropped out to pursue vengeance, the woman who endured all that by focusing on her hit list can be swayed from her course by the prospect of her family and her home.

2. To opt out of conventional society.
3. (of sound, electronic signal, etc.) To be lost or momentarily interrupted.

   I can't make phone calls because the line keeps dropping out.

4. Used other than with a figurative or idiomatic meaning: see drop,‎ out.
   • 1922, Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

     Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.

• Often used with of: “drop out of the race”

• drop
• drop-out, dropout

• flunk out