Word.ws English Dictionary

out at elbow

out at elbow adjective: of a coat, jumper, etc., worn through at the elbows; of clothes, shabby, in poor condition.

Adjective

out at elbow (not comparable)

  1. Of a coat, jumper, etc., worn through at the elbows; of clothes, shabby, in poor condition.
    • [T]he children [...] went about in shabby, out-at-elbow clothes, and much worn boots.1894, Ethel Turner, Seven Little Australians, published 1912, page 18
  2. In needy circumstances.
    • There was an old soldier who had been long in the wars—so long, that he was quite out-at-elbows, and did not know where to go to find a living.1890, Joseph Jacobs, “Jack Hannaford”, in English Fairy Tales, page 40

Forms of out at elbow

alternative formout-at-elbow
alternative formout at elbows

Questions about out at elbow

What does out at elbow mean?
Out at elbow means of a coat, jumper, etc., worn through at the elbows; of clothes, shabby, in poor condition.
What part of speech is out at elbow?
Out at elbow is an adjective.

Words near out at elbow in the dictionary

  1. out and out
  2. out argue
  3. out argued
  4. out argues
  5. out arguing
  6. out at elbow
  7. out at elbows
  8. out at heels
  9. out at the heels
  10. out back
  11. out ball

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: out at elbow (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 at elbow.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/out_at_elbow. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.