Word.ws English Dictionary

started out

started out is the simple past and past participle of start out.

Meaning of start out

Verb

start out (third-person singular simple present starts out, present participle starting out, simple past and past participle started out)

  1. To emerge suddenly; to jump out.
  2. To be or become conspicuous; to stand out.
    • I do not find that any particulars of this day's conversation start out. But it was in general most agreeable.1790, James Boswell, in Danziger & Brady (eds.), Boswell: The Great Biographer (Journals 1789–1795), Yale 1989, p. 102
  3. To begin.
    • He started out writing for the school magazine, and now he's a TV talk show celebrity.

Questions about started out

What is started out the simple past and past participle of?
Started out is the simple past and past participle of start out.

Words near started out in the dictionary

  1. started into
  2. started off
  3. started off on the wrong foot
  4. started on
  5. started on at
  6. started out
  7. started over
  8. started the ball rolling
  9. started up
  10. started up on
  11. started with a clean sheet

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: started out (page history and authors); start out (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: “started out.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/started_out. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.