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absentee

US/ˌæb.sn̩ˈti/
nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #11,517 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: absentees

An absentee is somebody who fails to turn up where they are expected. Persistent absentees, an absentee landlord, absentee ballot.

An absentee landlord is one who never visits the property, and the phrase carries a century of complaint with it. In America an absentee ballot is a postal vote, which is a neutral use of the same word.

Definitions of absentee

  1. 1nounabsenteeSomebody who fails to turn up where they are expected.B2+

    “The teacher marked the absentees on the register.”

absentee is a person.

Where it comes from

  1. Latin

    absēns

  2. Old French

    ausent

  3. Middle French

    absent

  4. Middle English

    absent

  5. English

    absent

  6. English, today

    absentee

Built from

  • absum · Latin — to be away from
  • ab · Latin — away
  • sum · Latin — to be

From absent + -ee. absent comes from Middle English absent, from Middle French absent, from Old French ausent, from Latin absēns. From Middle English absent, from Middle French absent, from Old French ausent, and their source, Latin absens, present participle of absum (“to be away from”), from ab (“away”) + sum (“to be”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

absentee in the wild

  • However, some jurisdictions seek to extract money from absentee owners by taxing land.

    Absentee landlord

  • Absentee ownership has sometimes put the absentee owners at risk of loss.

    Absentee landlord

  • An absentee ballot is a vote cast by someone who is unable to attend the official polling station to which the voter is normally allocated.

    Absentee ballot

  • Some places call early in-person voting a form of "absentee" voting, since voters are absent from the polling place on election day.

    Absentee ballot

  • With the exception of those elections, postal votes constitute a form of early voting and may be considered an absentee ballot.

    Postal voting

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the absum family

absenceabsent

absentee — used about once every 9,395 pages · #11,517 · point at the bar for the others