These words refer to the act of giving up or withdrawing from employment, school attendance, club membership or other activities. Resign and quit emphasize the voluntary giving up of a position, membership or office. Resign usually suggests the presentation of a formal letter declaring one’s decision. Quit is a less formal word, and is likely to be applied to employment for which wages instead of a salary are paid, or to a group activity that is not highly structured: to quit a factory job after a row with the foreman; to quit playing cricket with the district team. Quit strongly hints at making up one’s mind to go on the spur of the moment without much forethought or planning for the future. Of course, in more general usage quit can refer to the cessation of any activity: to quit smoking.

Leave is the most general term of this group; it does not imply much beyond the mere fact of ceasing to be part of a specific group, even in the narrower sense here considered. A person who leaves a job may, for instance, be planning to take a better one; he may have been dismissed; or he may have reached retirement age.

To drop out is to withdraw from participation or membership, usually following a period of loss of interest or of discouragement in the face of increasing competition. But the term often refers to involuntary withdrawal from sporting events or other activities because of physical disability, mechanical failure of some other factor beyond the participant’s control.

• Jones, in car 27, had completed only five laps when a broken fuel line forced him to drop out .

Except in such contexts as the latter, dropping out is a more negative and passive act than leaving , resigning or quitting . The term is commonly applied in America – and to an increasing extent in Australia and New Zealand – to adolescents who leave high school before earning a diploma, and who thereafter may find it difficult to obtain suitable employment. In Australia and New Zealand the more commonly used term is still school-leaver , which also applies in a non-pejorative way to those who have completed their studies. Drop out can also refer favourably to a rejection of false social values: to drop out of the race for material gain.