O level
1
7.9
- noun
- /ˈoʊ ˈlɛvəl/
- Archaic
:
O level
- The day I sat my art O level at school, all the other kids brought in bowls of fruit and vases of flowers to sketch in charcoal for the still-life exam.
- O level at school
I think I've got like one sort of GCSE pass, like the old O level, you know, perhaps.
- I think I've got like one sort of GCSE pass, like the old O level, you know, perhaps.
- And, and, and then you, you, you finished your O levels.
- So got a couple of O levels to my name in addition to the couple that I'd got at school, did a lot of fitness and all that kind of stuff.
Examples
-
When she only got a C for English Literature O-level, the teacher wrote that she's probably written right out of the topic and gone on to something quite different, which is a bit too sophisticated for that level.
Academic text (1994) -
Other girls my age are in school, wearing scratchy, plaid uniforms and swotting over O levels.
Fiction book (1998) -
Lucy is doing her O levels.
-
He's got one O level.
-
So, to their credit, they put me forward to do the O-level a year early.
Blog text (1) -
I was studying for O-levels in six different subjects and CSEs in four.
Fiction book (2001) -
At O-level, the girls had acquired more passes than the boys, and about the same number of passes at A-level.
Academic text (1994) -
I remember singing this song every year when the final form fives were leaving school after their O-level examinations.
Blog text (10) -
There were two levels of public examinations in Britain, in which students were examined in separate subjects. O-levels (Ordinary) were taken at about 16 years, and A-levels (Advanced) at about 18 years.
Academic text (1994) -
Lucy is studying hard for her O level exams in mathematics and science.
Synonyms
1
3.0
A school certificate students get by passing an exam at about 15 or 16 in the UK
An official exam taken by students in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland at about 16
Surface Forms
Morphology
O + level
The element 'level' transparently signals a stage or grade, so learners might infer this is some kind of educational level; however the 'O' (an abbreviation historically for 'Ordinary') does not by itself indicate 'examination' to an uninformed B1 learner. Because the term is an institutional name for a specific UK exam and requires background knowledge of the qualification system, its meaning is only partially inferable from the parts.
Etymology
O level comes from the phrase 'Ordinary Level'; the O stood for 'ordinary' and level showed it was the basic step below the 'A' level, the higher exam. So O level became the name for the older, basic school exam now mostly replaced by GCSEs.