/drop"owt'/ , n.
1. an act or instance of dropping out.
2. a student who withdraws before completing a course of instruction.
3. a student who withdraws from high school after having reached the legal age to do so.
4. a person who withdraws from established society, esp. to pursue an alternate lifestyle.
5. a person who withdraws from a competition, job, task, etc.: the first dropout from the presidential race.
6. Rugby. a drop kick made by a defending team from within its own 25-yd. (23-m) line as a result of a touchdown or of the ball's having touched or gone outside of a touch-in-goal line or the dead-ball line.
7. Also called highlight halftone . a halftone negative or plate in which dots have been eliminated from highlights by continued etching, burning in, opaquing, or the like.
8. Also called dropout error . the loss of portions of the information on a recorded magnetic tape due to contamination of the magnetic medium or poor contact with the tape heads.
Also, drop-out .
[ 1925-30, Amer.; n. use of v. phrase drop out ]