absentee.
A person who is absent from his or her employment, school, post, duty, etc.
Meaning & usage
A person who is absent from his or her employment, school, post, duty, etc.
At roll-call there were three absentees.
A person who is absent from his or her employment, school, post, duty, etc. Designating a person absent in a particular capacity, sometimes implying that they are difficult to contact, unresponsive, avoiding their responsibilities, etc.
absentee father; absentee landlord; absentee freeholder
A person who is absent from his or her employment, school, post, duty, etc. A person who is absent from their residence and usual environment, and has not been seen or heard from for some period of time, so that it is unknown whether they are still alive, for the purpose of civil law dealing with the management of property etc. in such cases.
Something that is not present where it might be expected.
The manufacturer's promised new model was a notable absentee at the car show.
Designating something whose owner, person responsible, etc. is absent.
absentee ballot, absentee property
A landholder who lives in another district or country than the one in which his estate is situated.
A voter who is not present at the time of voting; absentee voter.
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂ep Proto-Indo-European *-o Proto-Indo-European *h₂epó Proto-Italic *ap Latin abder. Latin ab- Proto-Indo-European *h₁es- Proto-Indo-European *h₁ésti Proto-Indo-European *bʰuH- Proto-Indo-European *-t Proto-Indo-European *bʰúHt Proto-Italic *ezom~*som Archaic Latin 𐌄𐌔𐌏𐌌 (esom) Old Latin esum Latin sum Latin absum Latin absēnsder. Old French ausentder. Middle French absentbor. ▲ Latin absēnsbor. Middle English absent English absent English -ee English absentee From absent + -ee.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.