Other forms: graduated, graduating, graduates
To graduate is to finish a university course successfully and receive the degree. Graduate from university, she graduates in June, a graduate of Leeds.
The preposition is from, not in — graduate from Oxford, graduated from medical school. In American English the word also covers finishing high school, which British English does not. The noun, pronounced with a weaker last syllable, is somebody who has done it: a graduate, graduate jobs, postgraduate study. Graduation is the ceremony. The verb also means to move gradually to something harder: graduate to the full-size instrument.
1verbgraduateTo finish a university course and receive a degree.
“She graduated in the summer and started work in the autumn.”
synonyms: graduation
2nouncompletedSomebody who has completed a degree.
“Half the graduates that year left the country.”
3verbmoveTo move gradually to something more advanced.
“He graduated to the bigger machine after a year.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
graduate is a completing of study.
Also accepted in games: graduation
Medieval Latin graduatus comes from gradus, a step — the same root as grade, gradual and degree. To graduate is to take a step up, and a degree is the step you reached.
Medieval Latin
graduātus — graduated, graduate
English, today
graduate
Built from
From Middle English graduat (“(noun) a graduate of a university; (adjective) graduate, having graduated”), borrowed from Medieval Latin graduātus (“graduated, graduate”), perfect passive participle of graduō (“to graduate”) (see -ate), from gradus (“step”) + -ō. The noun is originally derived within Latin from the adjective via substantivization, see -ate. Sense 10 of the verb, relating to Japanese entertainment, is a 卒業.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA