Word.ws English Dictionary

outworn

outworn is the past participle of outwear.

Adjective

outworn (comparative more outworn, superlative most outworn)

  1. no longer usable
  2. worn out
    • Unlasting passion, soon outworn conceit,
      Whereon I built, and on so dureless trust!a. 1618, Sir Walter Raleigh, The 21st and Last Book of the Ocean, to Cynthia
    • Gleaming shell of an outworn lie; fable of Right divine—
      You gained your crowns by heritage, but Blood was the price of mine.1933 January, Robert E[rvin] Howard, “The Scarlet Citadel”, in Weird Tales, volume 21, number 1, epigraph ("The Road of Kings")
  3. out of date
    • Unitarian Universalists urge reflection upon outworn religious assumptions and propose a serious religious alternative that affirms reason, science, human intuition and lived experience as profoundly as it affirms ancient religious traditions.1986 December 21, F. Jay Deacon, “Emotionally-Laden Prejudice”, in Gay Community News, volume 14, number 23, page 4
    Synonyms:
    antiquated

Meaning of outwear

Verb

outwear (third-person singular simple present outwears, present participle outwearing, simple past outwore, past participle outworn)

  1. (transitive) To outlast; to survive longer than: to outlive.
  2. (nonstandard, transitive, uncommon) To wear out.
    • Crushed impotent beneath this reign of terror,
      Dazed with mysteries of woe and error,
      The soul is too outworn for wondering.1874, James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night

Synonyms of outworn

Forms of outworn

comparativemore outworn
superlativemost outworn

Words formed from outworn

Questions about outworn

What does outworn mean?
Outworn means no longer usable.
What is outworn the past participle of?
Outworn is the past participle of outwear.
What part of speech is outworn?
Outworn is an adjective.

Words near outworn in the dictionary

  1. outworks
  2. outworld
  3. outworlder
  4. outworlders
  5. outworlds
  6. outworn
  7. outworth
  8. outworthed
  9. outworthing
  10. outworths
  11. outwound

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: outworn (page history and authors); outwear (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-outworn.wav.

Cite this entry: “outworn.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/outworn. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.