different between truant vs truancy

English

Etymology

From Middle English truant, truand, trewande, trowant (= Middle Dutch trouwant, trawant, truwant), from Old French truand, truant (“a vagabond, beggar, rogue", also "beggarly, roguish”), of Celtic origin, perhaps from Gaulish *trugan, or from Breton truan (“wretched”), from Proto-Celtic *térh?-tro-m, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *terh?-.

Cognate with Scottish Gaelic truaghan, Irish trogha (“destitute”), trogán, Breton truc (“beggar”), Welsh tru.

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -??nt
• IPA^(key): /?t???nt ~ ?t?u?.?nt/

Adjective

truant (not comparable)

1. Absent without permission, especially from school.

2. Wandering from business or duty; straying; loitering; idle, and shirking duty.
   • 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.

Derived terms

• truant officer

Translations

Noun

truant (plural truants)

1. One who is absent without permission, especially from school.

Derived terms

• play truant

Translations

Verb

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

1. (intransitive) To play truant.

2. (transitive) To idle away; to waste.
   • 1636, John Ford, The Fancies Chaste and Noble

     I dare not be the author / Of truanting the time.

3. To idle away time.
   • 1876, James Russell Lowell, Among My Books:Second Series, Milton

     By this means they lost their time and truanted on the fundamental grounds of saving knowledge.

References

Anagrams

• traunt

English

Etymology

truant +? -cy

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -??nsi

Noun

truancy (countable and uncountable, plural truancies)

1. The act of shirking from responsibilities and duties, especially from attending school.

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:truancy

Derived terms

• antitruancy

Translations

See also

• absenteeism
• play hooky