to black out
10
3.9
- phrasal verb
- /blæk aʊt/
:
oscurecer
- Before the storm hit, the residents were advised to black out their homes to prevent any damage from wind and rain.
- black out the windows
- black out the whole city
- completely blacked out
Turn the lights down as much as you can after the sun goes down and black out your room.
- Turn the lights down as much as you can after the sun goes down and black out your room.
- So I should add as well for that night, we blacked out all our faces, not like camouflage cream, not blackface.
Examples
-
Originally, I tried using blankets to black out the windows, but the cops caught on to that.
Blog text (25) -
All the upper windows have been blacked out.
Fiction book (1998) -
Turn the lights down as much as you can after the sun goes down and black out your room.
-
All right, so the idea is if we can black out all the windows, it's efficient and it's safe.
-
The rest of the port city and the countryside around were blacked out.
Fiction book (2001) -
I have a van, and I'm considering blacking out or covering all the windows in the back so that the van cannot be looked into.
Blog text (25) -
And with the whole town blacked out, isn't it strange, darling?
-
So good work by Intel for giving the option to black out the lights if you don't want all the RGB.
-
To ensure privacy during the party, they decided to black out the windows with heavy curtains.
-
The theater requested everyone to black out their phones to create an immersive experience for the performance.
Synonyms
38
4.0
To stop yourself remembering or noticing something unpleasant
8
5.4
Hide something so you cannot see it or remember it
1
9.5
To make something dark or hard to see
To make a place or screen completely dark so no light shows
How Dark
10
3.9
63
3.3
Surface Forms
Morphology
The censoring meaning is directly derivable from combining 'black' (to darken/obscure) with 'out' (completely/away from view): making text or images black so they are not visible is a literal compositional action. This motion/covering pattern is common and cross-linguistically transparent, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents would likely understand this sense (though the verb also has other senses like losing consciousness).
Etymology
Black out comes from the time during a war when people covered windows and turned off all lights so the whole town was very black and all lights were out, making it hard for enemy planes to see. That's why black out means 'to make a place completely dark'.