Word.ws English Dictionary

out-Herod

/aʊtˈhɛɹəd/

out-Herod verb: to surpass in evil and cruelty.

Verb

out-Herod (third-person singular simple present out-Herods, present participle out-Heroding, simple past and past participle out-Heroded)

  1. To surpass in evil and cruelty.
    • I could haue ſuch a Fellow whipt for o're-doing Termagant: it out-Herod's Herod. Pray you auoid it.c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac...
    • nor is his tone anything like so venomous as Carlyle's in that unpleasing essay on Cagliostro, in which he threw all decency to the winds and out-Heroded the Inquisition whilst ranting against it.1948, E. M. Butler, The Myth of the Magus

Forms of out-Herod

third-person singular presentout-Herods
present participleout-Heroding
past participleout-Heroded
pastout-Heroded
alternative formoutherod

Origin of out-Herod

From out- + Herod.

Words formed from out-Herod

  • out-Herod Herod

Questions about out-Herod

What does out-Herod mean?
Out-Herod means to surpass in evil and cruelty.
What part of speech is out-Herod?
Out-Herod is a verb.
How do you pronounce out-Herod?
Out-Herod is pronounced /aʊtˈhɛɹəd/.
What is the past tense of out-Herod?
The past tense of out-Herod is out-Heroded.

Words near out-Herod in the dictionary

  1. out-guess
  2. out-gun
  3. out-gunned
  4. out-gunning
  5. out-guns
  6. out-Herod
  7. out-Heroded
  8. out-Heroding
  9. out-Herods
  10. out-hike
  11. out-hiked

Source and license

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