Word.ws English Dictionary

butting out

butting out is the present participle and gerund of butt out.

Meaning of butt out

Verb

butt out (third-person singular simple present butts out, present participle butting out, simple past and past participle butted out)

  1. (Canada, US, derogatory, intransitive, slang) To stop interfering; mind one's own business.
  2. (idiomatic, imperative) To tell someone rudely to leave them alone or not get involved in what they're doing.
    • The government should butt out of people's private lives.

Questions about butting out

What is butting out the present participle and gerund of?
Butting out is the present participle and gerund of butt out.

Words near butting out in the dictionary

  1. buttillary
  2. buttin'
  3. butting
  4. butting heads
  5. butting in
  6. butting out
  7. butting up
  8. buttings
  9. Buttington
  10. buttinski
  11. buttinskies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: butting out (page history and authors); butt out (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “butting out.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/butting_out. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.