put out to pasture

English

Etymology

From the practice of putting draft animals too old to work in a pasture.

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

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Verb

put out to pasture (third-person singular simple present puts out to pasture, present participle putting out to pasture, simple past and past participle put out to pasture)

1. (informal) To make someone retire, especially due to advancing age.

   Synonym: put out to grass

   They've put John out to pasture and replaced him with someone who's got half his experience.

   • 1978 December 23, anonymous author, “More Angry Young Men”, in Gay Community News, volume 6, number 22, page 2:

     Your institutions were important stepping stones. Now they rot. Continuous revolution goes on and you're not with it with your alcoholic, tawdry, self-indulgent subculture. Put out to pasture your dialectic writers, they deserve a good green one, but the revolution must go on.

   • 2021 April 20, Glenn Thrush, quoting George W. Bush, “George W. Bush calls the current G.O.P. ‘isolationist, protectionist’ and ‘nativist.’”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     “But I’m just an old guy they put out to pasture — a simple painter,” added the 43rd president, who said he published the book to “elevate” the discourse around immigration.

2. (informal) To discontinue something.

   That version of the program has been put out to pasture.

   • 2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 119:

     The other problem was that the electrical locomotives vibrated, […] The electrical locomotives were put out to pasture, the carriages were adapted, and Electrical Multiple Unit traction was introduced from 1903.

3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see put out,‎ to,‎ pasture.

Translations

to make someone retire

Finnish: siirtää eläkkeelle, panna eläkkeelle German: aufs Abstellgleis schieben (literally “to move to the sidetrack”) Polish: pójść w odstawkę (pl) pf

Further reading

• “put someone out to pasture”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “put out to pasture”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “put out to pasture”, in Collins English Dictionary.
• “put sb out to pasture”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.
• “put someone out to pasture” (US) / “put someone out to pasture” (UK) in Macmillan English Dictionary.