Word.ws English Dictionary

outlead

outlead verb: to lead out.

Verb (1)

outlead (third-person singular simple present outleads, present participle outleading, simple past and past participle outled)

  1. (archaic) To lead out.
    • So he came down from his tower and called his knights. Lordings, —he said — to arms; the Emperour Divoun beleaguers us within our walls. Now let us make three sallies brave and sure. The first I will outlead myself.1870, Eustace Hinton Jones, The Romance of Sir Bevis of Hamtoun, page 57
    • Interest in this meeting of extremes may be added by the fact that in my experience they were waymarks of my outleading from an individualistic educational and religious training to a more altruistic point of view for thought and action;1976, Graham Taylor, Pioneering on Social Frontiers
  2. To bring about; to encourage.
    • This is an Education which consists in the outleading of the blackguardizing, pauperizing, vagrant-like, and theftuous elements of the mentality, entirely withdrawn, and apart from any moral guidance, any elevating tendency, any ameliorating influence, nay, directly under the direction of the...1851, Philomathos, “Ought Government to Provide a Secular Education For the People?”, in The British Controversialist: And Literary Magazine, number 13, page 351
    • All discourse is educative, and should have for its object the outleading and upbuilding of the intellect.1853, Samuel Neil, The Art of Reasoning, page 6

Noun

outlead (plural outleads)

  1. An electrical lead for outward-going current.
    • A thermocouple at the outlead of the photocathode just near the envelope of the photomultiplier measured the temperature of 100 ° K about 30 min after starting to cool it.1958, Journal of the Optical Society of America - Volume 48, Part 2, page 996
    • A deflection coil circuit for cathode ray tubes in which a scanning beam is deflected by a coil in a direction transverse to conductive strips having a common outlead, a narrow frequency band amplifier having its input connected to said outlead, a frequency discriminator having its input connected...1959, Canadian Patent Office Record - Volume 87, page 11112

Verb (2)

outlead (third-person singular simple present outleads, present participle outleading, simple past and past participle outled)

  1. (transitive) To exceed in leadership.
    • If anyone can outlead as leader, I hope he will outlead as leader, but my conversation was with those gentlemen who by their positions are entitled to participate in directing the affairs of the House.1914, United States. Congress, Congressional Record, page 8473
    • If it is found that there is a general indifference to such procedure, then, perhaps it can be rightly observed that the church as a whole, gains little in trying to "outlead" or "outpreach" those who are not yet ready.1951, Ellis Huntington Dana, Whose Freedom? of Pulpit and Pew, page 9
  2. (transitive) To exceed in leading; to maintain a strong lead ahead of; to outcompete.
    • On, on, in never-ending race, Behind the billows vainly chase; Both wave and wind with all their speed The barge doth thrice in flight outlead.1887, John Dunbar Hylton, Arteloise, page 200
    • Paul surrenders his mighty intellect to the hated One, and outleads all others in the intensity of his devotion and the intrepidity and zeal of his service.1899, George T. Lemmon, The Eternal Building: Or, The Making of Manhood, page 331

Examples of outlead in a sentence

  • Education is the fostering and outleading of everything of worth in a personality to its fulfilment.1924, John S. Griffiths, Health and Personality, page 131:
  • Finally, caps are fitted to each end to terminate the copper outleads.1978, J. A. Lynes, David Christopher Pritchard, Developments in Lighting - Volume 2, page 93:
  • Figure 5 shows the waveform at the outlead of package after simulating on DQ0-DQ4 signal nets.1997, Yong-Khim Swee, Hong Yu Zheng, Ray T. Chen, Microelectronic Packaging and Laser Processing, page 91:
  • The Himself pictures are the best things Sir William does, and this one, for mechanical accuracies of draftsmanship, outleads all that have gone before.1920, The Literary Digest - Volume 65, page 39:

Forms of outlead

Verb
third-person singular presentoutleads
present participleoutleading
past participleoutled
pastoutled
Noun
pluraloutleads

Origin of outlead

From Middle English outleden (“to lead out”), from Old English ūtlǣdan (“to lead or bring out”), from ūt- (“out”) + lǣdan (“to lead”). Equivalent to out- + lead.

From out- (“beyond, surpassing”) + lead.

Questions about outlead

What does outlead mean?
Outlead means to lead out.
How do you use outlead in a sentence?
Education is the fostering and outleading of everything of worth in a personality to its fulfilment.
What part of speech is outlead?
Outlead can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of outlead?
The past tense of outlead is outled.

Words near outlead in the dictionary

  1. outlawyers
  2. outlay
  3. outlaying
  4. outlayings
  5. outlays
  6. outlead
  7. outleading
  8. outleads
  9. outlean
  10. outleaned
  11. outleaning

Source and license

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