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# Originally, the word "abiturient" meant "a pupil finishing secondary school, a school-leaver"
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/iznachalno-slovo-abiturient-ispolzovalos-v-znachenii-uchashchiisia-okanchivaiushchii-sredniuiu-shkolu-vypusknik/
- Published: 2021-09-01T10:35:16.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:40:35.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Books, Observations, Science, Education

Originally, the word abiturient was used to mean "a pupil finishing secondary school, a school-leaver". Today it has acquired practically the opposite sense: not one who leaves school, but one who applies for admission.

As late as the 1960s, explanatory dictionaries described abiturients exclusively as school-leavers.

'Abiturient' goes back to the Latin 'abituriens', that is, "one who is about to depart". But through metonymy a new meaning gradually emerged, and it is now the only one in which the word is used. In essence, this is a logical simplification: everyone who is applying somewhere (an abiturient in the new sense) is a school-leaver (an abiturient in the old sense). It is simply that the abiturient now answers the need to group together precisely those who, after school, have nevertheless gone on to apply somewhere.

So if you come across abiturients of educational institutions in Andrei Bely, dancing in a hall with ladies, be aware that the author means to stress precisely that these are yesterday's schoolboys, not future students. Or, say, Shklovsky recalled that in 1913 he was an abiturient of a gymnasium, that is, a school-leaver, and not a twenty-year-old lout applying for a place in a gymnasium class.