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to live out

to live out

7 3.9
To work in someone's home and return to your own home each day
  • phrasal verb
  • /lɪv aʊt/
  • Jargon
translation icon : vivir fuera de la casa del empleador
  • She lives out in Denver... so we don't get to see her much anymore.

Examples

  • Plus, I live out, you know, just a ways out here on...

  • Her ex lives out on the West Coast, and he was there this morning.

    Fiction book (1994)
  • But we live out in the toolies.

    Fiction book (1991)
  • Billy has lived out here for many years, in Hillsborough, just south of San Francisco.

    Fiction book (1999)
  • They live out in Delaware.

  • We had a couple of good-sized hurricanes when I was a kid living out in Bohemia.

    Blog text (18)
  • She decided to live out her days in a cozy cottage near the beach.

  • After the couple retired, they chose to live out their lives in the same town where they grew up.

  • Many caregivers live out and commute to the homes where they provide assistance.

Synonyms

to sleep out
vsto live out
  • UK
1 7.6

A person who works in a home but goes home each evening

describes employees who keep their main home elsewhere as normal practice

Antonyms

194 3.7

To stay and sleep where you work, usually in your employer's house

How Resident

to live in
194 3.7
to live out
  • Jargon
7 3.9

Surface Forms

live out infinitive
lived out past
lived out past participle
living out present participle
lives out third person singular

Morphology

live + out

The adverb 'out' conveys 'away' or 'outside', so combining it with 'live' makes a meaning involving residing away from some reference point and is partly predictable from the constituents. However, the specific occupational/cultural sense (e.g. a live-out domestic worker who works in someone's home but lives elsewhere) or the exact pragmatic interpretation in contexts like 'lives out in the suburbs' is not fully derivable without exposure, so the expression is only partially transparent to a B1 learner.

Etymology

Live out contrasts with 'live in'. Think of a helper who works in a family house but does not sleep there, instead going back to their own home each night; the picture is someone who lives 'out' of the workplace, so it means 'to work in someone's house but live elsewhere'.