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Glite Dictionary
🏦 To give help 💸 To pay for release 🛶 To remove water
to bail out

to bail out

3 4.7
Remove water from a boat by scooping it out
  • phrasal verb
  • /beɪl aʊt/
translation icon : achicar
  • He grabbed a bucket to bail out the excess water before it capsized.
  • bail out the boat
  • bail out water

Examples

  • That's why we've got to bail out the water as fast as we can.

    When We Dance (2019)

  • She was bailing the boat out with the diaper bucket.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • I mean we can use them to bail water out.

    Saving the Titanic (2012)

  • Its been hard to finish when one is busy bailing out water all day to stay afloat.

    The Mercy (2018)

  • But this boat is flimsy and rickety and ships great quantities of water in its hold; and unless it is bailed out all the time, it quickly sinks.

    Academic text (2009)

  • The crew worked quickly to bail out the water from the sinking boat.

  • During the storm, we had to continuously bail out our canoe to keep it afloat.

Synonyms

to bail
vsto bail out
14 7.0

To remove water from a boat using a bucket

focuses on scooping and throwing water over the side repeatedly
to throw overboard
vsto bail out
  • NSFW
5 4.8

To throw someone or something from a boat into water

refers to ejecting objects or people from a boat rather than removing water
to bale out
vsto bail out
6.1

To scoop water out of a boat and throw it over the side

is identical in meaning but written in the other spelling
to sponge out
vsto bail out
4.7

To remove liquid from a surface by wiping it with a cloth

uses scooping and throwing rather than absorption with cloth

How Thorough

drain
44 1.4
to pump out
23 3.2
to bail out
3 4.7
to scoop
127 1.9

Surface Forms

bail out infinitive
bailed out past
bailed out past participle
bailing out present participle
bails out third person singular

Morphology

bail + out

The sense 'to give financial help to prevent failure' is a metaphorical extension of the literal verb 'bail' (to remove water) combined with 'out' (removal/away), so there is a recognizable relation of 'removing someone from trouble' but the specific financial-rescue meaning is not directly predictable from the literal senses. Because the connection depends on a metaphorical transfer and background knowledge of the idiomatic use, an average B1 learner who knows only the literal constituents would likely not infer the exact meaning without prior exposure.

Etymology

Bail out comes from using a bucket to bail water out of a boat to stop it from sinking. So it means 'to remove water' from a boat.