Word.ws English Dictionary

turns out

turns out is the third-person singular simple present indicative of turn out.

Meaning of turn out

Verb

turn out (third-person singular simple present turns out, present participle turning out, simple past and past participle turned out)

  1. (copulative, idiomatic, intransitive) To end up; to result.
    • I had hoped our first meeting would turn out better.
  2. (intransitive, by ellipsis) To succeed; work out; turn out well.
    • I'm afraid the cake didn't turn out.
  3. (idiomatic, intransitive) To attend; show up.
    • Hundreds of people turned out to see the parade.
  4. (dated, intransitive) To go out; to leave one's home.
    • But then one of Mr. Knott's men would have had to put on his coat and hat and turn out, as likely as not in the pitch dark, and in torrents of rain in all probability, and grope his way in the dark in the pours of rain, with the pot of food in his hand, a wretched and ridiculous figure, to where...1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, [Paris]: Olympia Press, →OCLC
  5. (idiomatic, transitive) To extinguish a light or other device.
    • Turn out the lights before you leave.
  6. (idiomatic, intransitive) To become apparent or known, especially (as) it turns out
    • It turns out that he just made a lucky guess.

See all 17 meanings of turn out

Questions about turns out

What is turns out the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Turns out is the third-person singular simple present indicative of turn out.

Words near turns out in the dictionary

  1. turns one's life around
  2. turns one's life upside down
  3. turns one's nose up
  4. turns one's world upside down
  5. turns or burns
  6. turns out
  7. turns over
  8. turns over a new leaf
  9. turns pear-shaped
  10. turns queen's evidence
  11. turns round

Source and license

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