out
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /aʊt/
ipa: /ɒʔ/
ipa: /uːt/
ipa: /ɘʉt/
ipa: /aʊt/
ipa: /ʌʊt/
ipa: [əut]
ipa: [ɛʊt]
note: Nova Scotia
ipa: [ɵut]
ipa: /æɔt/
ipa: /æʊt/
rhymes: -aʊt
Forms: form: outs
form: outing
form: outed
form: outed
form: oute
Etymology: From Middle English out, oute, from a combination of Old English ūt (“out”, preposition & adverb), from Proto-West Germanic *ūt, from Proto-Germanic *ūt (“out”); and Old English ūte (“outside; without”, adverb), from Proto-Germanic *ūtai (“out; outside”); both from Proto-Indo-European *úd (“upwards, away”).
Cognates
Cognate with Scots oot (“out”), Yola out, outh, udh, ut, uth (“out”), North Frisian üt, ütj (“out”), Saterland Frisian uut (“out of”), West Frisian út (“out”), Cimbrian aus, auz (“out, outwards”), Dutch uit (“out”), German, Luxembourgish aus (“out”), Yiddish אויס (oys, “over, finished”), Danish ud (“out; outside”), Icelandic út (“out”), Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish ut (“out”), Gothic 𐌿𐍄 (ut, “out of”).
Senses: examples: text: a king outed of his country
ref: 1689, John Selden, Table Talk:
text: The French have been outed from their holds.
ref: 1674, Peter Heylin, Cosmographie in four bookes:
text: "I outed myself for life that night. I can put up a show fight and exhibition bout, but I'm done for the real thing."
ref: 1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019:
glosses: To eject; to expel.
examples: text: Truth will out.
ref: c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene ii]:
text: In which Argument he whose courage can serve him to give the first onset, must look for two severall oppositions: the one from those who having sworn themselves to long custom and the letter of the Text, will not out of the road: the other from those whose grosse and vulgar apprehensions conceit but low of matrimoniall purposes, and in the work of male and female think they have all.
ref: 1643, John Milton, Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce:
text: In those opening minutes City looked like a team that were not ready for Celtic's intensity. They looked a bit shocked to be involved in a fight. Class will out, though.
ref: 2016 September 28, Tom English, “Celtic 3–3 Manchester City”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), BBC Sport:
synonyms: come to light
crop out
coordinate_terms: crop up
glosses: To come or go out; to get out or away; to become public, revealed, or apparent.
examples: text: 2009 March 16, Maurna Desmond, "AIG Outs Counterparties" (online news article), Forbes.com.
text: "Did Dora just offer up that advice, or were you pumping her for information?" "Shoot, I outed my informant. I'm a terrible spy."
ref: 2017, Jeph Jacques, Questionable Content (webcomic), Number 3509: Sensitive Information:
glosses: To reveal (a person or organization) as having a certain secret, such as a being a secret agent or undercover detective.
examples: text: A Brazilian company outed the new mobile phone design.
text: [Tom] Holland himself admitted to GQ last year that the two hadn't really wanted to go public with their dating status. A video of them making out in a car outed their relationship.
ref: 2022 December 16, Alyssa Bailey, “Zendaya Took Tom Holland to Visit Her Old School in Oakland”, in Elle:
glosses: To reveal (a secret).
examples: text: She throws her head back and lets out a warm laugh before she continues, “After that I thought, What am I so worried about? So I began to tell more people, and the more I outed myself, the easier it got.”
ref: 2014 July 18, Jase Peeples, “Susan Blu: Transformation of an Animation Icon”, in The Advocate:
text: Trans Media Watch had recently spoken at the Leveson Inquiry about how the Sun and the Daily Mail routinely outed trans people, publishing old names and photos, for no reason other than because they could.
ref: 2015, Juliet Jacques, Trans: A Memoir, Verso Books, →ISBN:
text: Always in my life I knew I was different. I also accepted that in a way, but I thought I could just live out those desires in private, for myself. I also have gone out en femme for a couple of years. […] I outed myself to my sister, which was super positive and is^([sic]) now my biggest supporter (love u sis!).
ref: 2015 December 30, Kathy, “Kathy's Favorite Photo (of Kathy!)”, in Femulate:
text: The Parkses were strict and narrowminded, and not knowing what to do with their recently outed bisexual teenage daughter, their obvious solution was to cut her off from her friends and keep her from leaving the house.
ref: 2016, Molly Booth, Saving Hamlet, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, →ISBN:
text: As of 2018, I chair the workforce committee and lead on diversity and inclusion, including heading up a policy review on gender identity and trans inclusion, although that led me to be publicly outed as non-binary in the Sunday Times.
ref: 2020, Jos Twist, Meg-John Barker, Kat Gupta, Benjamin Vincent, Non-Binary Lives: An Anthology of Intersecting Identities, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, →ISBN, page 116:
glosses: To reveal (a person) as LGBTQ+ (gay, trans, etc).
examples: text: "In my own case, I was beaten about the head by their wings, so we have had a remarkable exhibition of their various methods of offence." "It has been touch and go for our lives," said Lord John, gravely, "and I could not think of a more rotten sort of death than to be outed by such filthy vermin."
ref: 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:
glosses: To kill; to snuff out.