Word.ws English Dictionary

out-Tarzan

out-Tarzan verb: to perform better than the fictional character Tarzan, especially at feats of athleticism.

Verb

out-Tarzan (third-person singular simple present out-Tarzans, present participle out-Tarzaning, simple past and past participle out-Tarzaned)

  1. To perform better than the fictional character Tarzan, especially at feats of athleticism.
    • One wishes to be anew Smollett; another, to out-Tarzan the chronicler of apes.1926, Albert E. Bull, Authorship And Journalism, London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons, page 49
    • "Robin Hood" is melodrama - roistering, rowdy, swasbuckling melodrama, that brings back a whiff of the dear old pit where one sat in one's 'teens, and a taste of old peanuts as well as nostalgia, and almost forces a cheer when Errol out-Tarzan's Tarzan or plays quarter-staff with Little John.1938 July 10, The Sun, Sydney, page 7, column 4

Examples of out-Tarzan in a sentence

  • Mature is the husky who out-Tarzaned Tarzan in "50.000.000 B-C."1940 November 17, The Sunday Times, Perth, page 7, column 1:
  • In one sense Sequoyah out-Tarzaned Tarzan; but in another sense, unlike Tarzan, he merely copied others.1986, Roy Harris, The Origin of Writing, London: Duckworth, page 12:

Forms of out-Tarzan

third-person singular presentout-Tarzans
present participleout-Tarzaning
past participleout-Tarzaned
pastout-Tarzaned

Origin of out-Tarzan

From out- + Tarzan.

Questions about out-Tarzan

What does out-Tarzan mean?
Out-Tarzan means to perform better than the fictional character Tarzan, especially at feats of athleticism.
How do you use out-Tarzan in a sentence?
Mature is the husky who out-Tarzaned Tarzan in "50.000.000 B-C."
What part of speech is out-Tarzan?
Out-Tarzan is a verb.
What is the past tense of out-Tarzan?
The past tense of out-Tarzan is out-Tarzaned.

Words near out-Tarzan in the dictionary

  1. out-suaved
  2. out-suaves
  3. out-suaving
  4. out-swinger
  5. out-swingers
  6. out-Tarzan
  7. out-Tarzaned
  8. out-Tarzaning
  9. out-Tarzans
  10. out-there
  11. out-there-ness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: out-Tarzan (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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