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Glite Dictionary
😵 To faint ✂️ To censor 🌑 To make dark
to black out

to black out

12 6.1
To hide information so people cannot see it
  • phrasal verb
  • /blæk aʊt/
translation icon : censurar
  • Home games were all blacked out, every single one, to protect the ticket sales in the home stadium.
  • names blacked out
  • blacked out by censors
  • pages blacked out

But like I said, it's going to boil the ocean if it's allowed, if it's not just blacked out page after page after page.

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Examples

  • There is a second page on which all the print is blacked out.

    Fiction book (1992)

  • On every page, there were words blacked out.

    Fiction book (1995)

  • That way we'll black out all the commercial radio and television stations.

    The Astro-Zombies (1968)

  • Sir, may I ask why you blacked out the news?

    Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961)

  • But this part of the report has been blacked out out of consideration for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

    Blog text (29)

  • Some of her passages were blacked out by censors.

    Fiction book (1992)

  • The long missives he'd sent home during the war, whole lines blacked out by the censors, but the homesickness coming through.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • Once a student entered the room and was seated at the table, the researcher thanked him for coming to read, reminded him he would be recorded throughout the session, clicked the record button on the computer, and blacked out the screen so that the running video was not visible.

    Academic text (2015)

  • The reporter noted that some sensitive information was blackout in the official document.

  • To comply with privacy laws, the organization had to black out relevant details from the press release.

Synonyms

to censor
vsto black out
514 5.2

To remove parts of books and films that are offensive or about politics

is focused on stopping information appearing or being visible, not only judging harm
to block out
vsto black out
38 4.0

To stop yourself remembering or noticing something unpleasant

is concerned with preventing information appearing or being visible, not physical blocking
to blot out
vsto black out
8 5.4

Hide something so you cannot see it or remember it

is about deliberate suppression to stop publication or visibility rather than physical covering
to blank out
vsto black out
  • Literature
1 6.4

To remove words or other information from a document to hide them

is broader, aiming to stop material being published or seen in any form
to blue-pencil
vsto black out
1 8.0

Remove parts of a text to hide sensitive information

is more about preventing material from appearing publicly than routine copyediting

Antonyms

to publish
∞ 3.3

Make a book or article available to the public

to reveal
∞ 2.3

Show something that was hidden or secret

How Visible

to publish
∞ 3.3
to black out
12 6.1
to redact
  • Formal
35 7.5
to omit
66 3.4

Surface Forms

black out infinitive
black out past
black out past participle
blacking out present participle
blacks out third person singular

Morphology

black + out

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 image of covering words or names on a paper with thick black bars so the text is out of sight and no one can read it. That's why black out means 'to prevent information from being seen'.