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Delinquent vs Truant - What's the difference?

delinquent | truant |

As verbs the difference between delinquent and truant

is that delinquent is while truant is to play truant.

As an adjective truant is

absent without permission, especially from school.

As a noun truant is

one who is absent without permission, especially from school.

delinquent

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Late or failing to pay a debt or other financial obligation, like a mortgage or loan.
  • Fred is delinquent in making his car payment.
    The company made a new effort to collect delinquent payments.
  • Failing in or neglectful of a duty or obligation; guilty of a misdeed or offense
  • Synonyms

    * (late or failing to pay a debt) defaulting

    Derived terms

    * delinquency * juvenile delinquent * moral delinquent

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • One who disobeys or breaks rules or laws.
  • (obsolete) a term applied to royalists by their opponents in the English Civil War 1642 - 1645. Charles I was known as the chief delinquent.
  • Synonyms

    * See also

    truant

    English

    Adjective

    (-)
  • Absent without permission, especially from school.
  • :
  • Wandering from business or duty; straying; loitering; idle, and shirking duty.
  • :
  • *1603+ , (William Shakespeare), (Hamlet) , Act 1, Scene 2
  • *:A truant disposition, good my lord.
  • *1772 , , p.149
  • *:While truant Jove, in infant pride, / Play'd barefoot on Olympus' side.
  • *
  • *:Serene, smiling, enigmatic, she faced him with no fear whatever showing in her dark eyes.
  • Derived terms

    * truant officer

    Noun

    (truants)
  • One who is absent without permission, especially from school.
  • Derived terms

    * play truant

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To play truant.
  • the number of schoolchildren known to have truanted
  • To idle away; to waste.
  • * Ford
  • I dare not be the author / Of truanting the time.
  • To idle away time.
  • (Shakespeare)
  • * Lowell
  • By this means they lost their time and truanted on the fundamental grounds of saving knowledge.