Word.ws English Dictionary

comb-out

UK/ˈkəʊ̯mˌaʊ̯t/US/ˈkoʊ̯mˌaʊ̯t/

comb-out noun: an act of combing out hair.

Noun

comb-out (countable and uncountable, plural comb-outs)

  1. An act of combing out hair.
    Synonyms:
    teasing
  2. (idiomatic, informal) The identification and removal of someone or something.
  3. (idiomatic, slang) The act of sorting out.
    • McCann and I took ten men each and made a systematic comb-out of the Gardens. Every sniper we found we shot out of hand.1940, Operator 1384, McCann the Spy, quoted in Green's Dictionary of Slang, page 263
    • I’d like to see a good comb-out up there, to catch out these sort of people.1943, Celia Fremlin, “Background: The Town and The Newcomers”, in Harrisson, Tom, editor, Mass-Observation War Factory: A Report, quoted in Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Vintage/Ebury...

Synonyms of comb-out

Forms of comb-out

pluralcomb-outs

Origin of comb-out

Deverbal from comb out. First attested in 1915–1920 (sense 1 and sense 2). First attested in 1940 (sense 3).

Questions about comb-out

What does comb-out mean?
Comb-out means an act of combing out hair.
What part of speech is comb-out?
Comb-out is a noun.
How do you pronounce comb-out?
Comb-out is pronounced /ˈkəʊ̯mˌaʊ̯t/ (UK).
What is the plural of comb-out?
The plural of comb-out is comb-outs.

Words near comb-out in the dictionary

  1. comb-footed spiders
  2. comb-honey
  3. comb-honeys
  4. comb-jellies
  5. comb-jelly
  6. comb-out
  7. comb-outs
  8. comb-over
  9. comb-overs
  10. comb.
  11. Comba multiplication

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: comb-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.

Last updated:

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