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Out-and-out   /aʊt-ənd-aʊt/   Listen
Out-and-out

adjective
1.
Complete and without restriction or qualification; sometimes used informally as intensifiers.  Synonyms: absolute, downright, rank, right-down, sheer.  "An absolute dimwit" , "A downright lie" , "Out-and-out mayhem" , "An out-and-out lie" , "A rank outsider" , "Many right-down vices" , "Got the job through sheer persistence" , "Sheer stupidity"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Out-and-out" Quotes from Famous Books



... it's an out-and-out denial," said Purdy. "It doesn't mention the Post—just contradicts it. In fact, the report contradicts itself. It looks as if they're trying to warn people and yet they're ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe

... character is the profound contempt expressed for Nationalist M.P.'s. Englishmen are accustomed to speak of their own members, representing their own opinions, with respect. Not so in Dublin. A rabid Nationalist said to me, "I am an Irishman to the backbone. I am a Home Ruler out-and-out. But do you think I'd trust my property with either of the two Tims? Do you think such men as Tim Harrington and Tim Healy are fit to be trusted with the spending of 2-1/2 millions of money per annum? They have ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... a fool I was! But, I say, Arthur, why did you not deny it, out-and-out? Your manner frightened us. I suppose the police ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... state of complete preparation, as we flattered ourselves, for all sorts of weather, we began to feel as though a regular out-and-out storm, would be rather a luxury than otherwise. These bright skies and sunny days were very well in their way, but it wasn't in anticipation of them, that we had been planning and working for a month or more. There was no use at all for our ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... that, sir. But it was rum. You see it was like this; t'other chap as was crowing over me because I wouldn't fight, would give me an out-and-out good whack for the coward's blow, and ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn

... within the Catholic Church—that is, without disturbing the unity of its organization or denying the validity of its dogmas—while the critics of northern Europe, as we have seen, preferred to put their reforms into practice by means of a revolution—an out-and-out break with century-old traditions of Catholic Christianity. Even in northern Europe some of the foremost scholars of that period desired an intellectual reformation within Catholicism rather than a dogmatic rebellion ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... his house an English cousin who professed himself as rather knowing in the language of the north side of the Tweed. He asked him what he supposed to be the meaning of the expression, "ripin the ribs[51]." To which he readily answered, "Oh, it describes a very fat man." I profess myself an out-and-out Scotchman. I have strong national partialities—call them if you will national prejudices. I cherish a great love of old Scottish language. Some of our pure Scottish ballad poetry is unsurpassed in any language for grace and pathos. How expressive, how beautiful are its phrases! You can't translate ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... The out-and-out opponents of State government continued to reiterate the old argument of "Economy." They would vote against the Constitution in order to prevent an increase in the burdens of taxation. This argument of itself could not possibly have defeated ratification, ...
— History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh

... and saw him make a few reeling, descending steps, then lay what now seemed to be an out-and-out lifeless man on a bed of moss beneath ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... questions asked—and none answered. But civilization is a-pressing us hard, and these days is not our fathers' days. We are pretty independent even yet in old Cimarron, but busybodies has got together trying to make it a regular United States territory, and they ain't going to stand for a real out-and-out band of highwaymen such as used to levy on stage-coaches and wagon-trains without exciting no more remarks than the buffaloes. You may be sorry times is changed; so am I; but if times IS fresh, we might as well look 'em in the face. Us fellows ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis

... entitled him to feel quite at home in his red coat. He generally owned a racing colt or two, and attended meetings; but was supposed to know what he was about, and to have kept safely the five or six thousand pounds which his father had left him. And his farming was well done; for though he was, out-and-out, a gentleman-farmer, he knew how to get the full worth in work done for the fourteen shillings a week which he paid to his labourers,—a deficiency in which knowledge is the cause why gentlemen in general find farming so expensive an amusement. He was a handsome, good-looking ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope

... ain't no sense in that," he declared, shaking his head emphatically. "I can keep soul and body together, but what I get on with would kill you. There's worse things in the world than Eadie's biscuits. No, I ain't going to listen to any such out-and-out murder ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper

... an out-and-out Fenian, Ronayne was as honest a man as I ever met, and he was considered one of the most amusing men in the House ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

... "I can do with a man that is out-and-out anything. I can work with a Papist; I can work with a Methodist, as far as I can conscientiously meet him on common ground, and I can respect him if he conscientiously holds that he is right and I am wrong: but these fellows that are neither ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall

... government. Such were their pleas: there was much in the past history of France to support them. The responsible advisers of the Emperor determined to take a stronger tone in foreign affairs, while the out-and-out Bonapartists jealously looked for any signs of official weakness so that they might undermine the Ollivier Ministry and hark back to absolutism. When two great parties in a State make national prestige a catchword ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... have lost the higher standards of peace time or have hidden whatever religion they may have had—would not now be classed as definitely Christian men. But the remaining half, or one-tenth of the total number in the army, would probably be out-and-out Christians, strengthened by the severe discipline of the war and ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy

... he had been thinking of her only when he must. He thought of her whenever he saw himself caught in that flapping sail, and he thought of her whenever he recalled that she had taken it on herself to select his songs. But he did not want her to make out-and-out demands on his time and attention. Still less did he want her to talk about "happiness." This had come to be her favorite topic, and she discoursed on it profusely: he was almost ungracious enough to say that she did so glibly. "Happiness"—that conventional bliss toward which she ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... the stock Larry found in the safe, recalled the reputation of the elder Sherwood. He had been known as a spirited, daring man who would buy anything or sell anything; he had been several times victimized by sharp traders, some of these out-and-out confidence men. Studying these old records Larry remembered that the elder Sherwood a dozen years before had lost a hundred thousand in a mining deal which Old Jimmie Carlisle ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott

... competition and "dumping" by foreign countries. But Mr Chamberlain's new programme for a general tariff, with new taxes on food arranged so as to give a preference to colonial products, involved a radical alteration of the established fiscal system, and such out-and-out Unionist free-traders in the cabinet as Mr Ritchie and Lord George Hamilton, and outside it, like Lord Hugh Cecil and Mr Arthur Elliot (secretary to the treasury), were entirely opposed to this. Mr Balfour was anxious to avoid ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... baseness and ignominy are the very essence of man, is no longer capable of indignation or contempt. Nearly always Daudet's books present to us, if only incidentally, some favourite character which does credit to humanity. Out-and-out pessimists accuse him of distorting human nature by attributing to it imaginary graces and virtues: but does not their unbending pessimism distort it in another direction by showing to us, under the ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet

... in hundreds of thousands, that I could look straight into their eyes, and from the expression on their faces I could see that their reception of the Empress and myself was no artificial welcome but an out-and-out sincere one. That stirred us deeply and gave us great satisfaction. The Empress and I will take back with us recollections of London and England ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... He's in the saloon business. The middle-sized one in the plug hat is Marks. See his oily, yellow face dotted with pimples. He's a phoney piece of work; calls himself a mining broker. The third's Jake Mosher. He's an out-and-out gambler, a sure-thing man, once was ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... latterly, but with a lancet. Abundant drinking of vinegar also had been recommended as a means to accomplish the desired end. They were noble drinkers in the olden times, but until I began delving into literature of the subject I did not suspect that there had been any out-and-out vinegar topers. ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb

... of God was coming in reply to our prayer; if we read, observing all things, like Timothy, without prejudice or partiality, then I know no better reading for an ill-conditioned heart begun to look to itself than just a good, out-and-out party newspaper. And if it is a church paper all the better for your purpose. If you read with your fingers in your ears; if you read with a beam in your eye, you had better confine yourself in your reading; if you feel ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... met as Yet I must record) Figure in Debrett as Out-and-out a Lord: Ancestors, a thousand, Dignities, a score— Hear my bashful vows, and Think ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 20, 1892 • Various

... section of public opinion—as I judge a small minority—has the feeling that such an out-and-out military victory cannot be won or is not worth the price; and that the enemies of Germany, allowing her to keep her Eastern accretions, must make the best terms they can in the East; that there's no use in running the risk of Italy's defeat and defection before some sort of bargain could be made ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick

... new United States bonds, and that half the profits of the investment should be at the disposal of the state. This arrangement relieved the crippled finances of the college and gratified many of its friends. But there were many who regarded the measure as out-and-out favoritism to a Congregational college, and who put no faith in the proposed half-sharing of profits. They maintained that eventually the college would get the whole benefit of the money that had been collected for other purposes, and from many persons who could derive no benefit from such a disposal ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... out-and-out fight. Snooks, fever crazed, struggled to get out of bed, crying that he was going to sink his agonized body in the creek, and Con gripped the poor abhorrent wrists, forcing the man to his back. Then flinging his whole weight above the prostrate body he held him by sheer ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson

... thick air. The tones of the voices were unmistakable. Three voices there were, each with its own peculiarity, none of them Gratton's. First a big, booming voice; then a sharp, staccato-quick voice; thereafter a high-pitched, querulous utterance, nervous and irritable. Disagreement, if not out-and-out quarrel, had already come to camp. King moved a few paces nearer, pushed aside a low branch from which the snow dropped with little ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory

... counter or information desk behind which he works during the day, the stuffy bedroom to which he will go home to sleep, the vacuity of his mind and gaudy emptiness of his spirit. They know all this and pass him up with never a smile. Yes, even the manicure girls in the barber shop give him the out-and-out sneer and the hat-check girls and even the floor girls—the chambermaids—all of whom he has tried to date up—they all respond with an ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... would have been safer with me than with my first mate, who is the greatest villain afloat on the high seas. He does not like our milk-and-water style of robbing. He is an out-and-out pirate in heart, and has long desired to cut my throat. I have to thank him for being here to-night. Some of the crew who are like himself seized me while I was asleep, bound and gagged me, put me into a boat, and rowed me ashore; for we had easily escaped the Talisman in the squall, ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne

... along in an orderly manner. All services must be short or the people can not stand them—short prayers, short sermons, short everything. Oftentimes the service is gone through with, and nothing in it but an out-and-out performance; no life, no spirit, no power. Protestants often speak disparagingly of the ritualistic services gone through with by the Roman Catholic church, but if you come right down to it you will find about as much ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr

... Eva teased him about it, he would say: "Why, anybody could come from New York—an Englishman or a German or a Frenchman—without being born there, don't you see? but I'm a real out-and-out American, born there, and a citizen and everything, and I just want all these foreigners to know it, 'cause I think America's the greatest country in the world." Then the little boy would straighten his slender figure and toss back his curly hair with a great air of pride, which ...
— The Children's Portion • Various

... Jesus" before I went to Princeton—I saw Strauss himself in after years at Weinsberg, in Germany—but at Princeton the slightest approach to explaining the most absurd story in the Old Testament was regarded as out-and-out atheism. It had all happened, we were told, just as ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... at him with hands that nervously but deftly arranged details of his attire to please a taste fastidious and exacting in such matters—"Oah, my dear fallow, surely you appreciate danger of venturing into nateeve quarters in European dress? As regular-out-and-out sahib, I am meaning, of course. It is permeesible for riff-raff, sailors and Tommies from the Fort, and soa on, to indulge in debauchery among nateeves, but first-class sahib—Oah, noah! You would be mobbed in ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... At first, discouragement took hold of people's minds, opening the door to disbelief. A new feeling appeared on board, made up of three-tenths shame and seven-tenths fury. The crew called themselves "out-and-out fools" for being hoodwinked by a fairy tale, then grew steadily more furious! The mountains of arguments amassed over a year collapsed all at once, and each man now wanted only to catch up on his eating and sleeping, to make up for the time ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... I read farther back than a century, I feel imagination flagging—the Merry Monarch is not much more to me than John the Baptist. But the men of the forties stand out clear and distinct. If I have never seen an out-and-out fiery Chartist, I have at least seen some smouldering specimens—men with much of the eloquence and a little of the enterprise of the original five-pointers. It may be that as I grow older, my most interesting historical period will move with me, keeping always ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... by fierce gusts of wind. It is a fact that passengers have been obliged to remain for a whole week upon a European steamer, unable to land during a protracted norther. These storms are terrific in violence. It is not a straight out-and-out gale, an honest tempest, such as one sometimes meets at sea, and with which an experienced mariner knows how to cope. A norther is an erratic succession of furious squalls with whirlwinds of sand, the wind blowing from several points at the same time. When a norther blows, work is suspended ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... are Liberals." I was rather ashamed of this, for Mr. Brough was an out-and-out Tory; but Hodge and Smithers is a most respectable firm. I brought up a packet from them to Hickson, Dixon, Paxton, and Jackson, our solicitors, who are their ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray

... to be work at all. It is but a short sentence, gentlemen,—this, in the old edition of Vasari, and obscurely worded,—a very foolish person's contemptuous report of a thing to him totally incomprehensible. But the thing itself is out-and-out the most important fact in the history of the religious art of Italy. I can show you its significance in not many more words than have served ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin

... was Robert Gordon, who was consecrated in 1741 by Brett, Smith, and Mawman. Gordon, who was an out-and-out Jacobite, died ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... publishers, his own struggles at the time,—are all set forth clearly enough in the preface to the second edition. The play was written in the blank verse of Oehlenschlaeger's romantic dramas. Ibsen's portrayal of the Roman politician is not in accord with tradition; Catiline is not an out-and-out reprobate, but an unfortunate and highly sensitive individual in whom idealism and licentiousness struggle for mastery. Vasenius, in his study of the poet (Ibsens Dramatiska Diktning in dess Forsta Skede, Helsingfors, 1879), insists that Ibsen thus intuitively hit upon the real Catiline ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen

... jewellery, that my mother won't let me return. I asked him not to once, and he laughed in my face. He has a horrible laugh. He is half-English, too. I believe that makes him worse. If he were an out-and-out native he wouldn't be quite so revolting. Of course, I see my mother's point of view. Naturally, she would like me to be a princess, and, as she says, I can't pick and choose. Which is true, you know," she put in ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... has lost all interest in passing events; the globe has dwindled to a half-acre lot and the village church. Her partner finds the match unequal, spends his time with more congenial society, and is out-and-out in favor of Moses' law of a galloping divorce. The old stager has filled the political arena with frauds and brawls, and bruises and blood; and having levelled the morals of the ballot-box with those of the race-ground or box-ring, he has yet virtue enough left to declare that woman shall ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... Hamilton rightly inferred that, notwithstanding the people, since the adoption of the Constitution, manifested a disposition to sustain the general government, a large majority of freeholders, having heretofore supported Clinton as a wise, patriotic governor, would not now desert him for an out-and-out Federalist. To meet this emergency, several Federalists, at a meeting held February 11, 1789, nominated Robert Yates, an anti-Federalist judge of the Supreme Court, hoping thus to form a coalition with the more ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... word of condemnation the night of Cissie's confession. He would make a point of that, and was prepared to argue that, since he had said nothing, he meant nothing. In fact he was prepared to throw away the truth completely and enter the conversation as an out-and-out opportunist, alleging whatever appeared to fit the occasion, as all men ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... head with a despairing gesture. "Oh, Rob, you're hopeless! You don't undahstand at all! Nobody wants you to be flowery, and nobody likes flat-footed, out-and-out compliments. They're not nice at all. I just meant—well—I scarcely know what I did mean, but you know how Malcolm does. It isn't that he says a thing in so many words, but he has a way of somehow making you feel that he has noticed nice things about you, ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston

... marked an important crisis in his spiritual life. He shut himself up in complete retirement for a few days, and emerged a very different man from what he had been before. From that time to the day of his death, he was known as an out-and-out Christian. During the previous ten years it is clear, from his letters, that he was in the highest and truest sense a child of God, but there seems to have been something wanting in his character. From the time of his father's death, he seems to have had such a firm ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

... go it blind and either get in up to our necks in debt, same as City folks, or else quit off Christmas, individual, and mebbe hurt folks's feelings? Why not move intelligent, like a town, and all agree out-and-out to leave Christmas go by this year? And ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale

... thereon. Immediately after his daughter's two indubitable successes with Mrs. Charmond—the interview in the wood and a visit to the House—she had attended Winterborne's party. No doubt the out-and-out joviality of that gathering had made it a topic in the neighborhood, and that every one present as guests had been widely spoken of—Grace, with her exceptional qualities, above all. What, then, so ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... within it, a dull red color came slowly into his seamed face. It was not from any want of self-respect, far from it; he would not have been abashed if Queen Victoria with all her court in full dress had entered the room. A real out-and-out country New Englander knows no ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins



Words linked to "Out-and-out" :   complete, rank, downright, absolute



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