burn out

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See also: burnout and burn-out

English[edit]

Pronunciation[edit]

  • Audio (AU)(file)

Verb[edit]

burn out (third-person singular simple present burns out, present participle burning out, simple past and past participle burned out or (mostly Commonwealth) burnt out)

  1. (transitive) To destroy by fire.
    • 1941 April, “The Why and the Wherefore: Hawes Junction Collision”, in Railway Magazine, page 191 (the collision occurred in 1910):
      All four engines and the entire train were derailed, and owing to the fact that all the vehicles except the sleeping cars were gas-lit, the whole of the coaching stock except the two rear brakes was burned out, beginning with the two front coaches, which were completely wrecked.
  2. (intransitive) To become extinguished due to lack of fuel.
    Coordinate term: flame out
    The candle finally burned out.
    • 1847, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Chapter XVIII
      Mr. Mason, shivering as some one chanced to open the door, asked for more coal to be put on the fire, which had burnt out its flame, though its mass of cinder still shone hot and red. The footman who brought the coal, in going out, stopped near Mr. Eshton's chair, and said something to him in a low voice, of which I heard only the words, "old woman,"—"quite troublesome."
  3. (intransitive) To become nonfunctional (especially of lightbulbs or similar light-producing devices).
  4. (intransitive) To tire due to overwork; to overwork to their limit.
    After six months of twelve-hour workdays, most people just burn out and quit.
  5. (transitive) To cause (someone) to tire due to overwork; to cause (someone) to overwork to one's limit.
  6. (intransitive, slang, uncommon) To end one's shift at a job.
    I start my shift at three in the afternoon, and get to burn out at midnight.
  7. (intransitive, automotive) To have one's tires skid against the ground; to peel off, peel out.
  8. (idiomatic) To make (someone) unavailable for work involving exposure to ionizing radiation by employing (the person) in such work until the person's accumulated exposure reaches the maximum permitted for an administrative period, typically a year.
    The repairs on this nuclear reactor have burned out every welder in the province.

Derived terms[edit]

Translations[edit]

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Noun[edit]

burn out (uncountable)

  1. Nonstandard spelling of burnout.
    • 2002, Chuck Purdy, The Street Saint: Emergency in the Emergency Services‎[1]:
      His burn out hadn't been caused by too many dead bodies; it was from spending his life doing for people what most of them had refused to do for themselves.

Anagrams[edit]

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