Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Wiktionary
n. A person whose whereabouts are unknown and who is being sought.
Wikipedia
A missing person is a person who has disappeared and whose status as alive or dead cannot be confirmed as his or her location and fate are not known. Laws related to missing persons are often complex since, in many jurisdictions, relatives and third parties may not deal with a person's assets until their death is considered proven by law and a formal death certificate issued. The situation, uncertainties, and lack of closure or a funeral resulting when a person goes missing may be extremely painful with long-lasting effects on family and friends.
A person may go missing due to accident, crime, death in a location where they cannot be found (such as at sea), or many other reasons, including voluntary disappearance. In some countries, missing persons' photographs are posted on bulletin boards, milk cartons, postcards, and websites, to publicize their description.
A child may go missing for several different reasons. When trying to understand how to find and protect missing children, it is important to analyse the causes and effects of a child's disappearance. While criminal abductions are often the most commonly publicised cases of missing children, it only represents between 2–5% of missing children in Europe. Many categories of missing children end up in the hands of traffickers forced into sexual or commercial exploitation and abuse.
A number of organizations seek to connect, share best practices, and disseminate information and images of missing children to improve the effectiveness of missing children investigations, including the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC), as well as national centers, including the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in the US, Child Focus in Belgium, and The Smile of the Child in Greece.
Missing Person (French: Rue des Boutiques Obscures) is the sixth novel by French writer Patrick Modiano, published on 5 September 1978. In the same year it was awarded the Prix Goncourt. The English translation by Daniel Weissbort was published in 1980. Rue des Boutiques Obscures (literally 'the Street of dark shops') is the name of a street in Rome ( La Via delle Botteghe Oscure) where one of the characters lived, and where Modiano himself lived for some time.
On 9 October 2014, Patrick Modiano was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Usage examples of "missing person".
As much as he hated being blackmailed into tracking down Danny Novak, he'd been thinking of the missing person job as a sort of vacation.
This isn't like the other times, sooner or later we're going to have to go to Big Jack Donovan and report him as a missing person.
It's funny that, Tommy's been a missing person since he came back from the war.
Dental records and DNA would help to match the description with that of a missing person.
Similarly, in order to locate a missing person, the search should begin at the place from which the person had disappeared.
Damon's a missing person, and I'm a bit like Gulliver in one of Lilliput's toilets.