Word.ws English Dictionary

starting out

starting out is the present participle and gerund 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 starting out

What is starting out the present participle and gerund of?
Starting out is the present participle and gerund of start out.

Words near starting out in the dictionary

  1. starting lineups
  2. starting off
  3. starting off on the wrong foot
  4. starting on
  5. starting on at
  6. starting out
  7. starting over
  8. starting pistol
  9. starting pistols
  10. starting pitcher
  11. starting pitchers

Source and license

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