Mitch
To play truant from school. 'To mitch off' or 'to go on the mitch' - both mean the same thing. The mitcher is the one doing it; the act is the mitch. A Hiberno-English survival of a Middle English word that has dropped out of most other Englishes.
Etymology
From Middle English 'mychen' meaning to rob, steal, or pilfer, itself from Proto-Germanic '*mūkijaną' (to waylay, ambush, hide). The semantic journey from 'stealing' to 'skipping school' is the Hiberno-English distinctive: the truanting student is, by the older logic, stealing their own time from the school. The word is now almost extinct in standard English and survives in Hiberno-English and Welsh English.
In a sentence
Did you ever mitch school? - Bernard MacLaverty, Cal, 1998
Historical notes
Mitch is one of the small group of Hiberno-English Old / Middle English survivals that the school system has not been able to eliminate, despite the word naming its own enemy. Bernard MacLaverty used it in _Cal_ (1998): 'Did you ever mitch school?' Father Ted gave it national reach in 1996: 'me and a bunch of the lads there, once we mitched off to see a Dana concert.' The construction 'on the mitch' is the Dublin schoolyard form; 'mitch off' is more general.
Sources
- Oxford English Dictionary, entry mitch v. · dictionary