single out
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From single (“to take alone, or one by one”, intransitive archaic verb) + out. First attested in 1629.
Pronunciation
[edit]- enPR: sĭng′gəl out′
- (Received Pronunciation, General American, Canada) IPA(key): /ˌsɪŋ.ɡəl ˈaʊ̯t/
Audio (Southern England): (file)
- (General Australian) IPA(key): /ˌsɪŋ.ɡəl ˈæɔ̯t/
- (New Zealand) IPA(key): /ˌsəŋ.ɡəl ˈæʊ̯t/
- (Scotland) IPA(key): /ˌsɪŋ.ɡəl ˈʌʊ̯t/
- (India) IPA(key): /ˌsɪŋ.ɡel ˈawʈ/
- Hyphenation: sin‧gle out
Verb
[edit]single out (third-person singular simple present singles out, present participle singling out, simple past and past participle singled out)
- (transitive, idiomatic) To select (someone or something) from a group and highlight them or treat them differently.
- Synonyms: mark out, pick out
- Eddie singled out his favorite marble from the bag.
- Yvonne always wondered why Ernest had singled her out of the group of giggling girls she hung around with.
- For quotations using this term, see Citations:single out.
Translations
[edit]to select (someone or something) from a group and highlight them or treat them differently
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See also
[edit]Further reading
[edit]- Christine Ammer (2013), “single out”, in American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, second edition, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, →ISBN, page 408, column 1.