to flunk out
19
7.2
- phrasal verb
- /flʌŋk aʊt/
- Informal
:
ser expulsado por bajo rendimiento académico
- After failing several important exams, I was worried I might flunk out of college.
- student flunks out
Oh, flunked out of science class twice.
- Oh, flunked out of science class twice.
- And so they signed me up, transferred to phys Ed, still flunked out.
- And by the time I got to the, I went to an Academy and I was flunking out of school for calculus, three or three years of calculus, I couldn't do a damn thing.
- And so, so I, I flunked all the classes, but I took them all and, and flunked out six more times.
Examples
-
If I don't improve my grades, I will likely flunk out of high school this year.
-
What happens if a student flunks out or is expelled?
Academic text (2002) -
And where were you when your brother was flunking out of school?
-
And all I did was rack up a lot of college debt and I end up flunking out of college.
-
Right now I'm flunking out of half my classes, right?
-
Oh, dude, she's flunking out of school.
-
You're gonna flunk out of art school.
-
To no one's surprise, Fiona had flunked out freshman year.
Fiction book (2000) -
T.P., a great basketball guard in high school, had flunked out his freshman year at St. Joseph's because he never got around to attending class.
Fiction book (2000) -
He didn't study for the final and ended up flunking out of his summer school program.
Antonyms
How Severe
Surface Forms
Morphology
The sense is directly compositional: 'flunk' means to fail and 'out' conveys being excluded or no longer in, so combined they indicate being removed from a school because of failing. This follows a common verb + out pattern in English and would be predictable to a B1 learner who knows both constituent meanings.
Etymology
The phrasal verb flunk out comes from school life: to flunk means 'to fail' an exam, and out gives the image of being sent out of class or school. So, flunk out means 'to be dismissed from a school' because of bad grades.