missing in action

missing in actionadj/ˈmɪsɪŋ ɪn ˈækʃən/

• 1

  governmentmilitarypoliticsThe designation for a member of an organization (usually military) with whom contact is lost and whose whereabouts are not known, but whose death is not confirmed.

  • Missing in action are those who have been dropped from the muster-roll as missing in action, and have subsequently joined again. [...] If the missing in action, or desertion, and the return to the company, both occur in the quarter, it is not necessary to note them; in other words, it is not necessary that the soldiers should be dropped and taken up again on the same return.
  • Private Louis R. Ziegra of this place [Deep River, Connecticut], formerly a bookkeeper at the Pratt-Reid Player Action Co., who is announced in dispatches from the War Department as missing in action is a German prisoner of war.
• 2

  Not present when one is expected to be.

  • He says that when pressed about why the money was missing in action, NAB [National Australia Bank] failed to provide an explanation and threatened to foreclose on the customer.
  • Finding her toothbrush last night had been the extent of her unpacking and her slippers were still missing in action.