Word.ws English Dictionary

opt-out

opt-out adjective: requiring a person or organization to choose explicitly to avoid or forbid something; tending to include by default; used particularly with regard to mailing lists and advertising.

Adjective

opt-out (not comparable)

  1. Requiring a person or organization to choose explicitly to avoid or forbid something; tending to include by default; used particularly with regard to mailing lists and advertising.
    • With opt-out forms, take care to uncheck all unwanted selections.

Noun

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

  1. The act of opting out of something.
    • It [Greenpeace] also says that tax exemptions should be phased out for airlines, including the opt-outs that low-cost carriers currently have from paying VAT or fuel duty on kerosene.2023 August 9, “Network News: Network Rail under fire for spending thousands of pounds on flights”, in RAIL, number 989, page 15
  2. (UK, countable) A school or hospital that has withdrawn from local control.
  3. (countable) A regional broadcast that other stations in the network may elect not to include.
    • National television channels (descendant network) with regional or local slots or opt-outs: […]1995, Pierre Musso, Philippe Souêtre, Lionel Levasseur, The Printed Press and Television in the Regions of Europe
    • There is no limitation to the number of regional and local opt-outs that France 3 can operate; nor are there any guidelines in the channel's remit as to the length and content of such news programmes.2003, Michael Scriven, Emily Roberts, Group Identities on French and British Television, page 27

Antonyms of opt-out

Forms of opt-out

pluralopt-outs

Origin of opt-out

From opt + out.

Questions about opt-out

What does opt-out mean?
Opt-out means requiring a person or organization to choose explicitly to avoid or forbid something; tending to include by default; used particularly with regard to mailing lists and advertising.
What part of speech is opt-out?
Opt-out can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near opt-out in the dictionary

  1. opsters
  2. opt
  3. opt in
  4. opt out
  5. opt-in
  6. opt-out
  7. opt-outs
  8. opt.
  9. optable
  10. optacon
  11. optacons

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: opt-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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-opt-out.ogg.

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