outgoing

Pluraloutgoings

1. 1
   adjective

   Friendly, talkative, and sociable, especially comfortable meeting new people easily and at ease.

   Like a host who circulates through a party, drawing strangers into conversation.

   The new manager's outgoing nature put nervous interviewees at ease.

   Outgoing children often thrive in group activities and team sports.

   Similarsociable, extroverted, gregarious, friendly, talkative

   Oppositeshy, introverted, reserved, retiring

   Note

   Unlike the office-holding sense, this one grades: someone can be more outgoing, or the most outgoing person in the room. That helps with a real ambiguity. In "the outgoing former leader," Stanley Greenspan describes temperament, not a term ending, though the phrase could be read either way. Before a title, readers expect the leaving-office meaning; when people are described by character, it means sociable. Its natural opposites are shy and reserved.

2. 2
   adjective

   Heading out or on the way out of a place; moving away.

   The outgoing tide pulled the small boat away from the shore.

   All outgoing calls are logged by the company's phone system.

   Similaroutbound, departing, outward

   Oppositeincoming, inbound

   Note

   Here the word only points a direction, so it cannot be graded: a post, a tide or a vessel is not more or less outgoing. Only the sociable meaning takes more outgoing and most outgoing, which makes a comparative a quick test of which sense is meant. Its natural partner is incoming, as in 'incoming and outgoing vessels' in Woodrow Wilson's Executive Order 2692 of 1917.

3. 3
   adjective

   Still holding an office but due to be replaced, after an election has decided a successor.

   The outgoing president met with the president-elect to plan the transition.

   Reporters asked the outgoing governor about her plans once she left office.

   Similardeparting, retiring

   Oppositeincoming

   Note

   Office-holding language is built on pairs, and this sense is half of one: United States v. Fletcher (1893) speaks of the outgoing and incoming marshal. It applies to bodies as well as persons, such as a board or a cabinet. It can also follow the verb, as in Suharto's resignation speech of 1998: the cabinet "is outgoing." Like the directional sense, it never takes more or most.

4. 4
   nouncountableplural

   Money that leaves someone's possession through spending and payments, usually spoken of in the plural.

   She listed her outgoings in a spreadsheet to keep her budget under control.

   The company's outgoings exceeded its income for three straight quarters.

   Similarexpenses, expenditure, costs, outlays, spending

   Oppositeincome, revenue, earnings

5. 5
   nouncountable

   The act of leaving or going out; a departure or exit.

   The outgoing of the tide marked the start of their long journey.

   His sudden outgoing from the room surprised everyone at the table.

   Similardeparture, exit

   Oppositearrival, entrance

   Note

   A noun with a literary and devotional past. The King James Bible of 1611 speaks of "the outgoings of the morning and evening," and Jonathan Edwards used the plural for the soul's ardent reaching after God. John Buchan's The Outgoing of the Tide (1902) uses the singular for the ebb. In everyday prose, departure or exit is the plainer choice; this word carries the elevated voice those writers share.

6. 6
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of outgo.

   Note

   The verb behind this form is mostly a relic. Outgo meaning "surpass" is archaic, and its senses of outstripping, undergoing and overreaching are obsolete. Only the intransitive "go out, set forth" survives, and only regionally. A sentence like "profits were outgoing all records" therefore sounds deliberately old-fashioned. Most readers meet outgoing as an adjective, and outgo itself also lives on as a noun meaning an outlay.

7. 7
   nouncountable

   The extreme limit of something; the point or place where it ends.

   Beyond the outgoing of the forest, the land turned to open desert.

   The old map showed the outgoing of the kingdom at the river's edge.

   Similaredge, limit, boundary, border, extremity

   Note

   Boundary language from the King James Bible of 1611, where "the outgoings of the border" mark the point where a territory runs out, at the north bay of the salt sea. It is the spatial cousin of the act of departing: the place where the land itself goes out. The sense suits scriptural or deliberately old-fashioned description, not modern maps.

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