''graduate'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260723122144-00-⌔

graduate - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

graduate (plural graduates)

• A person who is recognized as having completed any of various levels of education.
  • ✤ Hypernym: person
  • ✤ Hyponym: postgraduate
  • ✤ Coordinate terms: student (not yet finished), undergraduate (not yet finished), graduand (almost recognized), dropout (left without finishing)
  • A person who is recognized by a university as having completed the requirements of a degree studied at the institution.
    • ✤ If the government wants graduates to stay in the country, they should offer more incentives.
  • (US, Canada, Philippines) A person who is recognized by a high school as having completed the requirements of a course of study at the school.
    • ✤ Hyponym: school-leaver
    • ✤ If the school board wants a higher percentage of students to become graduates, they should improve their remedial help for underachieving students.
• A graduated (marked) cup or other container, thus fit for measuring.

Adjective

graduate (comparative more graduate, superlative most graduate)

• graduated, arranged by degrees
• holding an academic degree
• relating to an academic degree

Verb

graduate (third-person singular simple present graduates, present participle graduating, simple past and past participle graduated)

• (intransitive, ergative) To be recognized by a school or university as having completed the requirements of a degree studied at the institution.
  • ✤ The man graduated in 1967.
  • ✤ Trisha graduated from college.
  • ✤ After graduating from Princeton University, he earned a law degree in Canada, then worked as an environmental lawyer in Israel before settling on the south side of Youngstown.¹
• (transitive, proscribed) To be certified as having earned a degree from; to graduate from (an institution).
  • ✤ Trisha graduated college.
• (transitive) To certify (a student) as having earned a degree
  • ✤ Indiana University graduated the student.
  • ✤ The college graduated him as soon as he was no longer eligible to play under NCAA rules.
• (transitive) To mark (something) with degrees; to divide into regular steps or intervals, as the scale of a thermometer, a scheme of punishment or rewards, etc.
• (intransitive) To change gradually.
  • ✤ As the species graduate into each other, both in form and in habits, from the grass-eating Geese to the fish-eating Harelds, it is difficult, […] to divide this large group into sections.²
  • ✤ Yadav, born Bharat Kalicharan, was a petty thief who had graduated to bigger crimes, terrorising Kasturba Nagar, on the edge of the city of Nagpur, in Maharashtra, from the 1990s until his death.³
  • ✤ sandstone which graduates into gneiss; carnelian sometimes graduates into quartz
• To prepare gradually; to arrange, temper, or modify by degrees or to a certain degree; to determine the degrees of.
  • ✤ to graduate the heat of an oven
  • ✤ Dyers, who advance and graduate their colours with salts.⁴
• (chemistry) To bring to a certain degree of consistency, by evaporation, as a fluid.
• (intransitive) To taper, as the tail of certain birds.
• (transitive, software engineering) To approve (a feature) for general release.
  • ✤ We have graduated the new machine-learning features and will roll them out tomorrow.
• (intransitive, Japanese entertainment) Of an idol: to exit a group; or of a virtual YouTuber, to leave a management agency; usually accompanied with “graduation ceremony” send-offs, increased focus on the leaving member, and the like.
  • ✤ Fans speculate that she was forced to graduate due to harassment and doxxing by stalkers and haters.

Etymology 1

From Middle English graduat(e) (“(noun) a graduate of a university; (adjective) graduate, having graduated”, also used as the past participle of graduaten (“to graduate”)), borrowed from Medieval Latin graduātus (“graduated, graduate”), perfect passive participle of graduō (“to graduate”) (see -ate (adjective-forming suffix)), from gradus (“step”) + -ō (verb-forming suffix). The noun is originally derived within Latin from the adjective via substantivization, see -ate (noun-forming suffix). Sense 10 of the verb, relating to Japanese entertainment, is a semantic loan from Japanese 卒業 (sotsugyō).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation)
  • (yod-coalescence) IPA: /ˈɡɹæd͡ʒuət/
  • (non-yod-coalescence) IPA: /ˈɡɹædjuət/
  • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
• (General American) enPR: grăjʹo͞o-ĭt, IPA: /ˈɡɹæd͡ʒuɪt/

Etymology 2

From Middle English graduaten (“to graduate”), from (adjective) graduat(e) (also used as the past participle of graduaten) +‎ -en (verb-forming suffix), from Medieval Latin graduātus, see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and Etymology 1 for more.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA: /ˈɡɹædjueɪt/, /ˈɡɹæd͡ʒueɪt/
  • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
• (US) enPR: grăjʹo͞o-āt, IPA: /ˈɡɹæd͡ʒueɪt/

Printed 2026-07-23.

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Footnotes

1. 2019 February 19, Jeremy Pelzer, “Youngstown School Board member Dario Hunter seeks Green Party presidential nomination”, in cleveland.com ‎${}^{[1]}$: ↩

2. 1852, William Macgillivray, A history of British birds, indigenous and migratory, page 573: ↩

3. 2022 November 7, Puja Bhattacharjee, “What drove 200 women to stab a gangster to death? Netflix series revisits crime that shocked India”, in the Guardian ‎${}^{[2]}$: ↩

4. 1650, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica: […], 2nd edition, London: […] A[braham] Miller, for Edw[ard] Dod and Nath[aniel] Ekins, […], →OCLC: ↩