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Dear fellow Stack users,

I got into a little dispute with my english teacher today. We got tasked to analyse a text and answer related questions.

There was one sentence in the text which read: "His academic integrety was damaged and soon after, he dropped out of sight".

Now the question is what the Author implies by that sentence. The possible answeres are:

A: He got fired by his University

B: He quit his job

I know that the correct answere is B. Although I said to my teacher, that just from this sentence alone, it would't be clear what the author tries to imply. She argued, that "he dropped" would be an active expression and therefore the sentence must imply answere B. But my intuition is, that A would also be possible and that this active expression woulnd't be evidence for B to be the only possible answere.

It would be great if you could tell me if my doubt was reasonable or not. Thank you very much in advance!

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  • I would take it to mean that they were trying not to tell you which of those two things occurred. That the most likely option was that the University no longer wanted the taint of a spoiled reputation, and applied pressure, and perhaps the threat of firing, to get him out. But that everything was done rather hush hush, so no specifics are given. The statement seems to be not clear on purpose.
    – Phil Sweet
    Commented Oct 18, 2018 at 10:15

2 Answers 2

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To ‘drop out of sight’ is a common expression. It is, of course, metaphorical. Soldiers can literally drop out of sight; so can animals.

The idea the expression is to leave the disappearance a complete mystery. all the person knows is that no more was seen of him. Nothing was said by the authorities. Apparently there was no gossip even. The teacher just vanished.

That leaves us all speculating: he may have been fired or forced to resign; he may have just run away without a word.

With a story like this, the unbroken mystery is surely the point.

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  • Yep, "dropped out of sight" means "vanished", either literally or figuratively. "Off the radar" is another similar term, though it can have other connotations.
    – Hot Licks
    Commented Oct 18, 2018 at 12:33
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A and B are not the only options, his contract may have naturally finished, for example. There is not much context here, but another possibility is that he simply quit appearing in academic circles and instead focussed on teaching classes at his institute, a not uncommon end in academia.

Given that these natural possibilities should also exist, there is nothing in the sample sentence to indicate that the university went to the especial effort of firing him, which makes his quitting the more likely answer.

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  • I am on the same page, that him quitting the job is the more likely option here. In the context of him making a major mistake, wouldn't A also be a possibility? My teacher argued that the active expression alone is evidence, that A is no possible answere
    – Tom Wellbrock
    Commented Oct 18, 2018 at 10:15
  • A is not really a good contender, especially as we do not know how long the dropping action took. The university is also not mentioned in relation to the dropping either.
    – Trevor Christopher Butcher
    Commented Oct 18, 2018 at 10:46

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