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📰 To publish 🔥 To extinguish 😕 To inconvenience ✋ To extend ❤️ To have sex ⚾ To dismiss (sports) 💉 To anesthetize 💪 To try hard
to put out

to put out

10 7.3
Make someone sleep so they do not feel pain during an operation
  • phrasal verb
  • /pʊt aʊt/
  • Specialized
translation icon : anestesiar
  • Before they started the procedure, the nurse explained that they would put out the patient to ensure they felt no pain.
  • put out like a light

Examples

  • The doctor assured me that the anesthesia would put out the patient quickly before the surgery began.

  • To prepare for the operation, the anesthesiologist needed to put out the patient, so they used a proven anesthetic.

  • I have to put him out.

    A Father's Day (2016)

  • "It's not like you can just put me out.

    Fiction book (1996)

  • Finding the money to pay was made even more difficult because the surgery temporarily put him out of work.

    Academic text (2017)

  • I can't just put her out.

    Fiction book (1993)

  • They had to give her something to put her out.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • When I can't sleep, it puts me right out.

    Queer Duck: The Movie (2006)

  • The anesthesia puts you out.

    Fiction book (1993)

  • Quick, put him out!

    City of Joy (1992)

Synonyms

to put to sleep
vsto put out
  • NSFW
26 6.3

Cause a person or animal to become unconscious, often using medicine

is limited to medical anesthesia for procedures not euthanasia or memory loss
to drug
vsto put out
  • NSFW
21 7.2

To give someone a substance to make them sleep or act differently

is specific medical anesthesia for surgery rather than general substance use
to put under
vsto put out
  • Specialized
17 6.0

Give someone medicine to make them unconscious before an operation

is the general phrase meaning make someone unconscious with anesthesia
to anesthetize
vsto put out
  • Specialized
12 7.1

To give medicine so a person or animal cannot feel pain, often before surgery

is the same idea focusing on making someone unconscious for surgery
to etherize
vsto put out
  • Archaic
1 9.9

To give someone a drug that makes them unconscious before surgery

is broader using any anesthetic not only a single chemical
to anesthetise
vsto put out
  • Specialized
6.1

Give medicine so a person or animal does not feel pain during a medical procedure

is the same term expressed in a different written form

Antonyms

to wake up
∞ 1.0

To stop sleeping or make someone else stop sleeping

How Sedated

to knock out
  • NSFW
210 4.3
to put out
  • Specialized
10 7.3
to sedate
  • Specialized
95 6.8

Surface Forms

put out infinitive
put out past
put out past participle
putting out present participle
puts out third person singular

Morphology

put + out

The anesthetic sense is partially inferable because 'put' can mean 'place into a state' and 'out' can signal loss of consciousness in constructions like 'knock out' or 'black out', so there is a conceptual link to making someone unconscious. However, 'out' more typically means 'outside' for learners and the specific medical/useful sense 'put (someone) out' = 'sedate/put to sleep' is idiomatic and register-specific, so a B1 learner who only knows the constituents would likely not fully predict it.

Etymology

Put out meaning 'to make unconscious for surgery' comes from the image of 'putting someone to sleep' so they are 'out' and not awake, so it means 'to give medicine that makes someone unconscious'.