outscout
outscout verb: to surpass in scouting, or reconnaissance.
Verb
outscout (third-person singular simple present outscouts, present participle outscouting, simple past and past participle outscouted)
- To surpass in scouting, or reconnaissance.
- In the Matabele campaign he had out[-]scouted the savage scouts and found his pleasure in tracking them among their native mountains, […]1900, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “The Siege of Mafeking”, in The Great Boer War, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], →OCLC, page 404
- A major league owner in Brooklyn, St. Louis or Chicago might not be able to outscout and outspend the Yankees. But he could find and sign gifted ballplayers in places the Yankees ignored.2002, Scott Simon, chapter 2, in Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, page 29
- To overpower by disdain; to outface.
- Steel your thoughts, ſharp your reſolue, imboldẽ your spirit, graſp your ſvvords; alarum miſchief, & vvith an vndãted brovv, out ſcout the grim oppoſition of most menacing perill.1600 or 1601 (date written), I. M. [i.e., John Marston], Antonios Reuenge. The Second Part. […], London: […] [Richard Bradock] for Thomas Fisher, and are to be soulde [by Matthew Lownes] […]...
Noun
outscout (plural outscouts)
- An advance scout.
- […] tho’ the Enemy took the Train I had laid, and on sight of our small Body on the Hill, sent a Party from their greater Body to intercept them, before they could reach the Town; yet the Sequel prov’d, we had mistaken their Number, and it soon appeared to be much greater than we at first imagin’d....1728, Daniel Defoe (attributed), The Memoirs of an English Officer, London: E. Symon, pp. 211-212
- [They] lay covered by the underwood, and behind rocks and roots of trees, waiting in silent ambush for their pursuers, of whose approach they had always information from their out-scouts.1803, Robert Charles Dallas, The History of the Maroons, London: Longman and Rees, Volume 1, Letter 2, p. 41
- A group of advance scouts; an advance scouting party.
- As soon as they approached near the Town, the two Indians which were in the Canoa with our five Men for the Out-scout, jumped over-board, and we lost them.1707, William Funnell, chapter 3, in A Voyage Round the World, London: James Knapton, page 42
- […] they think it absolutely necessary that an outscout of 40 Men should be sent at the charge of the Province to the Carrying Place […] to observe the Motions of the Enemy […]1744, Peter Wraxall, entry dated 17 May, 1744, in Charles Howard McIlwain (ed.), An Abridgment of the Indian Affairs, Harvard University Press, 1915, p. 232
Forms of outscout
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | outscouts |
| present participle | outscouting |
| past participle | outscouted |
| past | outscouted |
| Noun | |
| plural | outscouts |
Origin of outscout
From out- + scout.
Questions about outscout
- What does outscout mean?
- Outscout means to surpass in scouting, or reconnaissance.
- What part of speech is outscout?
- Outscout can be a verb or a noun.
- What is the past tense of outscout?
- The past tense of outscout is outscouted.
Words near outscout in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: outscout (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: “outscout.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/outscout. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.