no-show

plural no-shows · alternative no show

1. An absence; failure to show up or to make a scheduled appearance, especially at a hotel or a place of employment.

   You may want to consider instituting a charge for no-shows. […] Also, you must inform patients, in advance, that there is a charge for no-shows, and what that charge is.

   2010, Neil Baum, Gretchen Henkel, Marketing Your Clinical Practice: Ethically, Effectively, Economically, Jones & Bartlett Learning, →ISBN, page 30

2. broadlyA person or group that does not show up.

   Out of fifty people who said they would attend, we only had three no-shows.

   1 more example

   Once they were enrolled […] they never did any work, but Frankel would deliver signed time sheets to the district office, collect the checks, and give them to his fake workers. And the no-shows would give Frankel the salary money, which he put into Beth Rachel school.

   1972, Crawford Gillan, Sir Harold Evans, Essential English for Journalists, Editors and Writers, page 192

3. abbreviationellipsisEllipsis of no-show sock.

   Now some young people are declaring a preference for crew socks, which generally rise to midway up the shin, and thumbing their noses at the ankle and no-show varieties that are staples of the previous generation’s sock drawers.

   2024 June 20, Callie Holtermann, “A Sock War Is Afoot Between Millennials and Gen Z”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 20 Jun 2024

present singular third person no-shows · participle present no-showing · participle past no-showed · past no-showed · alternative no show

1. To fail to show up for something.