Why don't dictionaries list "burnout" as spinning tires?

Question

None of many official and authoritative dictionaries I checked online describe "burnout" as does this Wikipedia article. What I'm talking about is this:

I checked:

Cambridge Dictionary
American Heritage Dictionary
Random House Kernerman Webster's Dictionary
Oxford Dictionaries (at lexico.com)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Collins English Dictionary
Webster's New World College Dictionary
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Online
Macmillan Dictionary
Oxford Learner's Dictionary

The only place I've seen this definition is in Wiktionary where it is the last and fifth definition given, after definitions 2 and 3, which would seem to suggest these meanings are more frequently encountered:

2. (US, slang) A marijuana addict; one whose brains have been burned out.
   
3. (aeronautics, space) The shutoff of a rocket motor following the complete exhaustion of its fuel supply, or having been irreversibly throttled after the application of a planned delta-v.
   

The Wikipedia article says that a "burnout" can also be called a "peelout" or "power brake", but from what I've seen "burnout" seems to be much commoner than either of those two alternatives. "Peelout" or "peel-out" and "power brake", if found in dictionaries at all, often have inconsistent meanings among each other. One I saw gave the definition of "peelout" as what I would call a skid (as in coming to a stop with the wheels stationary). Wiktionary doesn't list this "peelout" as a "burnout", other dictionaries list "peel out" as a phrasal verb meaning to depart quickly and noisily in a car or motorcycle, and "power brake" gives results like this:

A motor vehicle brake assisted by a power mechanism operated by the engine that amplifies pressure applied to the brake pedal.
American Heritage Dictionary

What I find surprising is that to my knowledge "burnout" isn't really slang or informal. The Wiktionary entry listed definition 2, a marijuana addict, as US slang, but didn't mark spinning tires meaning at all. If I were giving testimony in a court I would most likely use this word instead of saying "He spun his wheels and blew up smoke from his tires."

Is "burnout" not the overwhelmingly commonest word for this action? Is it slang or informal? And if it isn't, why isn't this meaning defined in dictionaries? Even informal and slang terms are defined in official dictionaries, and I thought "burnout" was a very common term. It's something I thought all of us see and hear all the time. And I'd bet some of us do little mini versions of this when we take off too fast, especially in front-wheel drive cars.

Answer 1

The expression burnout meaning spinning tires is actually mentioned in the following dictionaries of slang. It is derived from car racing, originally from US.

The Green’s Dictionary of Slang cites burnout in the suggested meaning apparently as a UK usage:

Burnout:

7. spinning the rear wheels of a car without moving, thus causing a cloud of smoke.

   • 1999 [UK] Indep. on Sun. Travel 25 July 2: ‘A burn-out’ [a crowd-pleasing manoeuvre that sees the rear wheels spin violently while the car remains stationary in a cloud of smoke].

   • 2000 [UK] Guardian G2 28 Apr. 4: There were a couple of tyre tracks from some burnouts.

While The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English defines burnout as a US expression:

3 - In drag racing, the pre-race spinning of ar’s rear tyres to clean and heat the tyres producing crowd-pleasing noise and smoke (US 1988):

• Police were a used and pelted with bottles and cans as they tried to break up the crowds cheering drag racing and burnout competitions. Herald p.3, 4 April 1988

Answer 2

The OED does not list 'burnout' but it does list one of the meanings of 'doughnut' as :

3. slang (originally U.S.). A manoeuvre or stunt in which the rear end of a motor vehicle is deliberately made to revolve rapidly around the front end (or vice versa) by means of a controlled skid, often leaving ring-shaped tyre marks or tracks. Also: a similar manoeuvre executed by another type of vehicle. Frequently in to do (also spin, cut, etc.) doughnuts.

Oxford English Dictionary

It does indeed seem strange that the OED lists what they refer to as the 'slang' doughnut usage but does not include the slang use of 'burnout'.

The OED also refers to 'burn up' in a slang usage :

burn-up n. Brit. /ˈbəːnʌp/, U.S. /ˈbərnˌəp/ (a) the consumption of fuel in a nuclear reactor; (b) slang a ride on a motor-cycle, etc., at an extremely high speed