AWOL

as in missing
not present at a mandatory time and place The soldier was AWOL for more than a week. "Where's Ben?" "I'm not sure—he's been AWOL all day."

Synonyms & Similar Words

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for AWOL
Adjective
  • Divers were searching New York City’s East River under the Roosevelt Island Bridge Friday for a missing 15-year-old girl who went into the water but never resurfaced.
    Thomas Tracy, New York Daily News, 30 May 2025
  • But more than confidence and an impressive stat line, Neville has something else that had gone missing in Fayetteville: Joy.
    Lindsay Schnell, New York Times, 29 May 2025
Adjective
  • So many firsts, gone, charred to ash, just remnants of an area that once represented Black prosperity and joy.
    Maya Richard-Craven, Forbes, 13 Jan. 2025
  • The original pioneers were mostly busy making non-hyperpop or gone: SOPHIE tragically died in 2021; 100 gecs spent years toiling to make their zany stadium-rock second album.
    Kieran Press-Reynolds, Pitchfork, 3 Oct. 2024
Adjective
  • School personnel also would be prohibited from referring truant students to police to be ticketed as punishment.
    Jennifer Smith Richards, ProPublica, 28 May 2025
  • If the form's not submitted, the student would be considered truant.
    Carrie Shepherd, Axios, 1 Apr. 2025
Adjective
  • Presence Sometimes what’s absent from a film defines it as much as what’s present.
    Stephanie Zacharek, Time, 4 June 2025
  • China's defense minister was absent from this year's event and sent a lower-level delegation instead.
    Billal Rahman, MSNBC Newsweek, 1 June 2025
Adjective
  • But the South Dakota hospital refused to submit the bill to his out-of-state Medicaid plan, instead sending it to Wirt and eventually threatening to send the debt to a collection agency.
    Arielle Zionts, Miami Herald, 30 May 2025
  • After adding in the state and local sales tax, plus the DMV and dealer fees, the out the door and in your garage total purchase price came to: $145,890.
    Tony Leopardo, Mercury News, 25 May 2025
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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Cite this Entry

“AWOL.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/AWOL. Accessed 11 Jun. 2025.

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