check out

Formschecks out, checking out, checked out

1. 1
   examinephrasal verbtransitive

   To examine or inspect something closely, look into it, or gather information to make a decision; also, to eye someone with obvious attraction.

   Before you sign anything, have a mechanic check out the car.

   The detective checked out the suspect's alibi with the hotel staff.

   Similarexamine, inspect, investigate, verify

   Note

   The exclamations Check it out! and Check this out! point someone at something worth seeing, from the best prices in town to the mayor's arrest. Aimed at a person, the phrase can mean eyeing them with plain attraction. Checking out a rumor means testing it, and a rumor that passes checks out in its turn.

2. 2
   phrasal verbintransitive

   To record one's departure from a hotel, workplace, restaurant, or similar place.

   Guests who check out after noon are charged for an extra night.

   The nurses check out at the end of each shift by swiping their badges.

   Similarleave

   Note

   Without an object it takes of before the place: check out of the hotel, check out of a room. From also turns up, as when Sewell Ford's singer is checking out from the first floor suite. The song Hotel California plays on the routine of leaving a hotel: you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

3. 3
   phrasal verbtransitive

   To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something, such as hotel guests, employees, or library books.

   With a library card, you can check out up to ten DVDs at a time.

   The front desk checked out forty guests before the conference ended.

   Similarborrow

   Note

   Like most two-part verbs with an object, it splits around a pronoun: check it out, check them out, never check out it. With a noun either order works, so a reader can check out a mystery or check a mystery out, and a desk clerk can check out a family or check the family out.

4. 4
   noun · check-out

   Alternative form of checkout.

   The hotel offered us a late check-out because our flight left in the evening.

   Shoppers waited ten minutes at every check-out in the store.

   Note

   The hyphenated check-out and the closed checkout are one noun, with the plural check-outs, covering the hotel desk, the supermarket line, the last step of buying online and even a test of whether a device works. The verb behind them stays two separate words: you check out at the check-out.

5. 5
   prove truephrasal verbintransitive

   To prove true or in order once it has been looked into.

   The bank held the transfer until the sender's identity checked out.

   Every figure in the report checks out against the original receipts.

   Note

   The subject is the thing tested, not the tester: stories, leads and alibis check out when someone has looked into them and found nothing wrong. A complement can follow with as: in Perry Mason a weapon definitely checks out as the murder gun. If everything checks out is the usual all-clear, whether for a police inquiry or a database login.

6. 6
   lose interestphrasal verbintransitive

   To lose interest in an activity and stop taking part except in a token way; to stop cooperating.

   After the merger was announced, many employees simply checked out and waited for their severance.

   Once the coach started yelling, the players would check out for the rest of practice.

   Similardisengage, withdraw

   Note

   The body stays while the interest leaves: students or staff who have checked out still turn up but give only token effort. It is milder than going blank altogether, and in formal prose it can travel in quotation marks, as when S. Greggory Johnson III writes of students who just "checked out".

7. 7
   diephrasal verbeuphemisticintransitive

   An indirect, offhand way of saying to die.

   The doctors gave him six months, but he had no intention of checking out before his daughter's wedding.

   He joked that when he finally checks out, he wants a party instead of a funeral.

   Similardie

   Note

   The phrase treats death as leaving a hotel, stretching signing out at the front desk to the end of a life. It is breezy rather than tender, so it suits jokes about one's own end better than words of sympathy. Talk of planning to check out can point to suicide, which calls for care.

8. 8
   take codephrasal verbtransitive

   To take source code or other material from a source control repository in order to modify it, often checking the changed version back in later.

   Each developer checks out the branch, makes changes, and commits them by Friday.

   You can't check out a file that a teammate has locked for editing.

   Note

   Its meaning shifts with the version control system. In older locking systems, checking out a file reserves it, so no one else can edit it until it is checked back in. In newer distributed systems nothing is locked: checking out simply switches your working copy to a chosen branch or an earlier version.

9. 9
   go blankphrasal verbintransitive

   To become catatonic or otherwise unresponsive to what is going on around one.

   After the accident, she would check out for hours, sitting motionless by the window.

   The patient checked out completely and stopped answering the nurses' questions.

   Note

   Here nobody seems to be home: the person is present but unreachable, as in Susan Nathiel's Daughters of Madness, where a mother would sit looking at her nails and "just be gone". The phrase describes what an onlooker sees rather than naming a condition, which is why it suits memoir and conversation better than a diagnosis.

10. 10
    win (darts)phrasal verbintransitive

    To take one's last turn at the oche and score all the points one has left, winning the game.

    Needing 120, he checked out with treble 20, single 20 and double 20.

    Left on 32, she stepped up to the oche and checked out on double 16 to take the leg.

    Note

    Finishing is harder than scoring: the player must bring the total down to exactly zero, and in the usual game the last dart has to land in a double, the narrow outer ring, such as double 16. The run of darts that does it is a checkout, and a player who keeps missing doubles is failing to check out.

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