Learn English – Difference in the implied meaning when different words for “cheating” used

An alumnus is undoubtedly a graduate or former student of an establishment of higher education and the implication is normally that such people have completed a course of study there. Whether or not anyone who hasn’t completed a course of study is recognized as an alumnus would, I imagine, be a matter for each establishment to decide. If you wish to avoid ambiguity, dropout would be the better choice. Alternatively, you could describe the personal circumstances of academic failure in more detail. (I have used alumnus, but the feminine is alumna. The plural of alumnus is alumni and the plural of alumna, alumnae. In referring to male and female graduates, it seems to be the convention to call them alumni.)

Interesting :) But you can imagine that monstrosity is an extrapolation of the primary baby, miscarriage, blood and death definition. You actually can use Ngrams for this by searching for the term along with an appropriate adverb. In this case, I made an educated guess and searched for something along the lines of hideous abortion, ugly abortion and similar. As you have noted, the frequency of usage has petered out in the last few decades, albeit, not down to zero :) The graph also indicates that it was still being used with relative regularity in the '50s.

A few examples excerpted from the results:

From A sack of shakings by Frank Thomas Bullen, 1901:

She was everything that the Harbinger was not — an ugly abortion that the sea hated. When I first saw her (after I had shipped), I asked the cook whether she wasn't a razeed steamboat — I had almost said an adapted loco-boiler.

From The French Revolution: The Bastille by Thomas Carlyle, 1911:

Miserable man ! thou " hast done evil as thou couldst " : thy whole existence seems one hideous abortion and mistake of Nature ; the use and meaning of thee not yet known.

and via Wiktionary, from Pictures of Italy, Chapter 10, by Charles Dickens, 1846:

Insomuch that I do honestly believe, there can be no place in the world, where such intolerable abortions, begotten of the sculptor’s chisel, are to be found in such profusion, as in Rome.