Word.ws English Dictionary

feel out

feel out verb: to attempt to ascertain a person's point of view, or the nature of a situation, by cautious and subtle means.

Verb

feel out (third-person singular simple present feels out, present participle feeling out, simple past and past participle felt out)

  1. (idiomatic) To attempt to ascertain a person's point of view, or the nature of a situation, by cautious and subtle means.
    • I think we should feel out your mom's thoughts about this before we decide anything.
    • I feel out strangers that come in to make sure they know they're in a gay place and won't cause any trouble.1976 February 7, Rose Flower, quoting Jimmy McGrath, “Playland: The Friendliest Place In Town”, in Gay Community News, volume 3, number 32, page 13
    Synonyms:
    sound out, check out

Synonyms of feel out

Forms of feel out

third-person singular presentfeels out
present participlefeeling out
past participlefelt out
pastfelt out

Questions about feel out

What does feel out mean?
Feel out means to attempt to ascertain a person's point of view, or the nature of a situation, by cautious and subtle means.
What part of speech is feel out?
Feel out is a verb.
What is the past tense of feel out?
The past tense of feel out is felt out.

Words near feel out in the dictionary

  1. feel no pain
  2. feel one's legs
  3. feel one's oats
  4. feel one's way
  5. feel oneself
  6. feel out
  7. feel someone's collar
  8. feel someone's pain
  9. feel sorry for
  10. feel ten feet tall
  11. feel the Bern

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: feel 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: “feel out.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/feel_out. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.