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Description: Introduction and objective: The study of language attrition involves investigating why, how, and the extent to which aspects of a person’s language knowledge can decline. More than four decades after the establishment of this subfield, there is still substantial variation in what researchers describe as “attrition,” which hinders the study and creation of robust, testable hypotheses of attrition. The objective of this scoping review is to understand how researchers define and operationalize the term “language attrition” in empirical research. Method: We will systematically search six databases: Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), Google Scholar, JSTOR, Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA), PsycInfo, and Web of Science. The searches will include peer-reviewed publications containing keywords of interest (e.g., “first language attrition”). The screening process will take place using Covidence. One reviewer will screen all studies, and a second reviewer will independently evaluate a subset (10%) of studies at each stage (i.e., title and abstract screening, full-text eligibility assessment, and extraction). Initial interrater reliability will be reported, and any disagreements will be resolved through discussion. Analysis: We plan to quantitatively and qualitatively analyze these data. We will calculate frequencies and proportions for coded items (RQ1, RQ2, RQ3, RQ4), and we will report trends in categorical or descriptive items (RQ1, RQ5). Ethics and dissemination: No ethics board approval is necessary as no human subject data will be collected. We intend to disseminate these results through presentations at relevant conferences and submission of the final manuscript to a peer-reviewed journal.