outlead

English

Etymology 1

From Middle English outleden (“to lead out”), from Old English ūtlǣdan (“to lead or bring out”), from ūt- (“out”) + lǣdan (“to lead”). Equivalent to out- +‎ lead.

Verb

outlead (third-person singular simple present outleads, present participle outleading, simple past and past participle outled)

1. (archaic) To lead out.
   • 1870, Eustace Hinton Jones, The Romance of Sir Bevis of Hamtoun, page 57:

     So he came down from his tower and called his knights. Lordings, —he said — to arms; the Emperour Divoun beleaguers us within our walls. Now let us make three sallies brave and sure. The first I will outlead myself.

   • 1976, Graham Taylor, Pioneering on Social Frontiers:

     Interest in this meeting of extremes may be added by the fact that in my experience they were waymarks of my outleading from an individualistic educational and religious training to a more altruistic point of view for thought and action;

2. To bring about; to encourage.
   • 1851, Philomathos, “Ought Government to Provide a Secular Education For the People?”, in The British Controversialist: And Literary Magazine, number 13, page 351:

     This is an Education which consists in the outleading of the blackguardizing, pauperizing, vagrant-like, and theftuous elements of the mentality, entirely withdrawn, and apart from any moral guidance, any elevating tendency, any ameliorating influence, nay, directly under the direction of the demoralized and the abandoned.

   • 1853, Samuel Neil, The Art of Reasoning, page 6:

     All discourse is educative, and should have for its object the outleading and upbuilding of the intellect.

   • 1924, John S. Griffiths, Health and Personality, page 131:

     Education is the fostering and outleading of everything of worth in a personality to its fulfilment.

Noun

outlead (plural outleads)

1. An electrical lead for outward-going current.
   • 1958, Journal of the Optical Society of America - Volume 48, Part 2, page 996:

     A thermocouple at the outlead of the photocathode just near the envelope of the photomultiplier measured the temperature of 100 ° K about 30 min after starting to cool it.

   • 1959, Canadian Patent Office Record - Volume 87, page 11112:

     A deflection coil circuit for cathode ray tubes in which a scanning beam is deflected by a coil in a direction transverse to conductive strips having a common outlead, a narrow frequency band amplifier having its input connected to said outlead, a frequency discriminator having its input connected to the output of said limiting and filtering means, said discriminator tuned to a multiple or submultiple of said reference frequency;

   • 1978, J. A. Lynes, David Christopher Pritchard, Developments in Lighting - Volume 2, page 93:

     Finally, caps are fitted to each end to terminate the copper outleads.

   • 1997, Yong-Khim Swee, Hong Yu Zheng, Ray T. Chen, Microelectronic Packaging and Laser Processing, page 91:

     Figure 5 shows the waveform at the outlead of package after simulating on DQ0-DQ4 signal nets.

Etymology 2

From out- (“beyond, surpassing”) +‎ lead.

Verb

outlead (third-person singular simple present outleads, present participle outleading, simple past and past participle outled)

1. (transitive) To exceed in leadership.
   • 1914, United States. Congress, Congressional Record, page 8473:

     If anyone can outlead as leader, I hope he will outlead as leader, but my conversation was with those gentlemen who by their positions are entitled to participate in directing the affairs of the House.

   • 1951, Ellis Huntington Dana, Whose Freedom? of Pulpit and Pew, page 9:

     If it is found that there is a general indifference to such procedure, then, perhaps it can be rightly observed that the church as a whole, gains little in trying to "outlead" or "outpreach" those who are not yet ready.

2. (transitive) To exceed in leading; to maintain a strong lead ahead of; to outcompete.
   • 1887, John Dunbar Hylton, Arteloise, page 200:

     On, on, in never-ending race, Behind the billows vainly chase; Both wave and wind with all their speed The barge doth thrice in flight outlead.

   • 1899, George T. Lemmon, The Eternal Building: Or, The Making of Manhood, page 331:

     Paul surrenders his mighty intellect to the hated One, and outleads all others in the intensity of his devotion and the intrepidity and zeal of his service.

   • 1920, The Literary Digest - Volume 65, page 39:

     The Himself pictures are the best things Sir William does, and this one, for mechanical accuracies of draftsmanship, outleads all that have gone before.

   • 1962, Planning Research Corporation, Survey of the Need for Language Translation, page 6:

     West Germany far outleads other European countries in the number of dailies published, and the Asiatic press has grown greatly in recent years and, from all indications, is still growing.

Anagrams

• deal out, lead out, lead-out, leadout