outwind

English

Etymology 1

From out- +‎ wind.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /aʊtˈwaɪnd/

Verb

outwind (third-person singular simple present outwinds, present participle outwinding, simple past and past participle outwound)

1. (transitive) To extricate by winding; to unloose.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto III”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     they haue him enclosed so behind, / As by no meanes he can himselfe outwind

   • 1647, Henry More, “[Philosophical Poems.] Psychozoia, or The First Part of the Song of the Soul, Containing a Christiano-Platonicall Display of Life.”, in Alexander B[alloch] Grosart, editor, The Complete Poems of Dr. Henry More (1614–1687) […] (Chertsey Worthies’ Library), [Edinburgh: […] Edinburgh University Press; Thomas and Archibald Constable, […]] for private circulation, published 1878, →OCLC, canto II, stanza 71, page 25:

     Dear Psittacuse! when shalt thou once outwind / Thy self from this sad yoke?

Etymology 2

From out- +‎ wind.

Verb

outwind (third-person singular simple present outwinds, present participle outwinding, simple past and past participle outwinded)

1. (transitive) To surpass in wind or breath.
   • 1840, William Gilmore Simms, Border Beagles: A Tale of Mississippi:

     The urchin had an elasticity of muscle, a capacity of stretch and endurance in his sinews, and a share of positive strength in his excessive breadth of shoulders, which made him little inferior in conflict to most ordinary men, and in speed he could have outwinded the best.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “outwind”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)