Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (orig. milit.) absent without leave; also in fig. use.

1918		M. Baldwin letter in Canteening Overseas (1920) 166: The Germans say ‘God be with us.’ But if He is, He surely must be A.W.O.L.
1919		C.H. Thorp Handful of Ausseys 175: A couple uv privates wot been adrift — a.w.l. — for nearly six muns.
1919		W.H. Downing Digger Dialects 9: a.w.l. — absent without leave.
1929		(con. WWI) H. Odum Wings on My Feet 105: Any of you boys leave this camp without orders which means A.W.O.L. If so you gonna ketch hell.
1936		(ref. to 1920s) L. Duncan Over the Wall 289: Here is what one newspaper man wrote about the A.W.O.L. convicts.
1941		A. Gurney Bluey & Curley 21 May [synd. cartoon strip] I’m already eight days A.W.L.
1947		J.L. Riordan ‘Some “G.I. Alphabet Soup”’ in AS XXII:2 Apr. 109: A.W.O.L. — also pronounced disyllabically as A-WOL — has come to signify ‘after women and liquor,’ and ‘a wolf on the loose’.
1949		Wodehouse Mating Season 98: Nothing sticks the gaff into your chatelaine more than a guest being constantly a.w.o.l.
1956		‘Ed Lacy’ Men from the Boys (1967) 25: I nearly killed a cocky A.W.O.L. wop.
1963		J. Rechy City of Night 92: The motorcyclists without bikes, the cowboys without horses, awol servicemen or on leave.
1971		B. Crump ‘Bastards I Have Met’ in Best of Barry Crump (1974) 254: Some of his mates used to swear that he was A.W.O.L. for more of the time than he was there.
1977		C. McFadden Serial 70: His spinal column was threatening to go awol.
1988		D. Woodrell Muscle for the Wing 124: The fun buddies went AWOL, lost to some secret mirth.
1999		Observer Mag. 5 Sept. 33: His [...] father made him quit the band, and he has gone AWOL.
2000		J.J. Connolly Layer Cake 13: He’d have disappeared down to Ibiza [...] and was still awol two or three weeks later.
2001		S. King Dreamcatcher 76: ‘I’ve got a couple of AWOL choppers myself’. Beaver hooked back one corner of his mouth, baring a left gum.
2008		M. Hanif Case of Exploding Mangoes (2009) 38: Tell me that you don’t know why Obaid went AWOL.
2012		C. Stella Rough Riders 119: You ditch the car you driving first chance you can [...] Even you have to go AWOL a couple of days.
2019		N. Walker Cherry 96: It was good to go AWOL.

2. amour without love, used by habituees of singles bars to denote their brief (strictly sexual) entanglements.

1985

(con. 1979) T.E. Murray ‘Lang. of Singles Bars’ AS 18: AWOL n phr Amour without love (probably by analogy with AWOL ‘absent without leave’.