outgo

Etymology

PIE word *úd The verb is derived from Middle English outgon (“to go out, depart, leave; to come out, emerge; to escape; to protrude; of a sword: to be drawn; to emanate from (a place); to accompany”), from Old English ūtgān (“to go out”), from ūt- (prefix meaning ‘out’) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *úd (“away; out; outwards; upwards”)) + gān (“to go; to walk”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰeh₁- (“to go; to walk”)). Compare Middle English outwenden (“to go out, depart, leave; to escape; to be emitted, fly out from; of a weapon: to be drawn”), which, like modern outgo, had the past tense and past participle form outwent. The noun is derived from modern English out- (prefix meaning ‘away from; toward the outside of’) + go. Sense 1 (“cost, expenditure, or outlay”) was probably modelled on income. cognates * Middle Dutch utegaen (modern Dutch uitgaan) * Old High German ūzgān ūzgēn (Middle High German ūzgān, ūzgēn, modern German ausgehen) * Scots outgae (“to go out, depart”) * Swedish utgå

verb

1. (transitive)
   1. (archaic) To go further than (someone or something); to exceed, to go beyond, to surpass.
      As the infamy of the conduct of Rhode Island outgoes all precedent, so the influence of her counsels can be of no prejudice. 20 July 1788, George Washington, “Gᵒ. Washington to Jonathⁿ. Trumbull Esqʳ.”, in Documentary History of the Constitution of the United States of America. 1786–1870. […] Part 1.—Letters and Papers Relating to the Constitution, to July 31, 1788 (Bulletin of the Bureau of Rolls and Library of the Department of State; no. 11, part 1), Washington, D.C.: Department of State, published September 1905, →OCLC, page 808
      Ah, Pistoia! Pistoia! why dost thou not decree to burn thyself outright, that thou mayest endure no longer, since thou outgoest thy seed in evil-doing? 1849, Dante Alighieri, “Canto XXV”, in John A[itken] Carlyle, transl., Dante’s Divine Comedy: The Inferno. A Literal Prose Translation,[…], London: Chapman and Hall,[…], →OCLC, pages 296–297
      As Professor [John] Fiske outgoes [William] Maginn, Professor [John Churton] Collins outgoes Fiske. He ascribes to [William] Shakespeare, in effect, a greater facility in Latin than is possessed by many professional scholars, because much of Latin is for any man far harder, more elliptic, more obscure than is any modern French for a cultivated modern Englishman. 1909, John M[ackinnon] Robertson, “The Learning of Shakespeare”, in Montaigne and Shakespeare: And Other Essays on Cognate Questions, 2nd edition, London: Adam and Charles Black, →OCLC, part I, pages 301–302
   2. (obsolete)
      1. To experience, go through, or undergo (something).
      2. To travel faster than (someone or something); to outstrip, to overtake.
2. (intransitive)
   1. (archaic except poetic and Britain, regional) To go out, to set forth, to set out.
      There is a God, the One only Creator, / The All-Animator; / From Him the light of life ever outgoeth,— / Life's river floweth: […] 1890, John Bragg, “Life”, in Sonnets and Short Poems (Second Series), Leeds, Yorkshire: […] Alfred W. Inman, →OCLC, page 13
   2. (obsolete) To go too far; to overextend or overreach.

noun

1. (countable, business, archaic except India) A cost, expenditure, or outlay.
   [T]he word "income" means, as already shown, that which has come in, and not that which might have come in, but did not. If expenditure means what has been paid out, or outgoes, then income means what has come in, or receipts. 12 July 1912, Joseph Cross, District Judge, United States District Court for the District of New Jersey, “Mutual Benefit Life Ins. Co. v. Herold, Internal Revenue Collector”, in The Federal Reporter[…] (National Reporter System, United States Series), permanent edition, volume 198, St. Paul, Minn.: West Publishing Co., published 1913, →OCLC, page 215
   Net income ('profits') is the difference between income and outgo. 3 June 1918, Joseph McKenna, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States (delivering the court’s opinion), quoting the Government’s submissions, “Lynch, Collector of Internal Revenue for the District of Minnesota, v. Turrish”, in Ernest Knaebel (reporter), United States Reports: Cases Adjudged in the Supreme Court at October Term, 1917[…], volume 247, New York, N.Y.: The Banks Law Publishing Co., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 227
   Through this program of action we address ourselves to putting our own national house in order and making income balance outgo. 4 March 1933, Franklin D[elano] Roosevelt, “Franklin D. Roosevelt: Inaugural Address”, in Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States from George Washington 1789 to Richard Milhous Nixon 1969 (91st Congress, 1st Session, House Document; 91-142), Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, published 1969, →OCLC, page 237
   Under a refinancing scheme, initiated by the Agricultural Refinance and Development Corporation (ARDC), banks which refinance the construction of godowns for FCI [Food Corporation of India] are to be refinanced up to 80% of their outgos. 7 March 1977 – 13 March 1977, “Food”, in Chanchal Sarkar, editor, Data India, number 10, New Delhi: K. Bhupal for the Press Institute of India, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 154, column 1
   Your revenues and your outgos, then, are not the same. 5 October 1983, E[arl] Thomas Coleman, “Statement of Gene L. Swackhamer, President, Farm Credit Banks of Baltimore”, in Rural Electrification and Telephone Revolving Fund Self-sufficiency Act of 1983: Hearings before the Subcommittee on Conservation, Credit, and Rural Development of the Committee on Agriculture, House of Representatives, Ninety-eighth Congress, First Session, on H.R. 3050 […] (Serial No. 98-37), Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, published 1984, →OCLC, page 271
   By the early 1980s the outgos to the fund were huge and the Government of India started looking for ways to reduce the fertilizer subsidies. 2008, Pradip Baijal, “How Did I Get into This?”, in Disinvestment in India: I Lose and You Gain, Delhi: Pearson Longman, page 6
2. (uncountable) The act or process of going out; (countable) an instance of this; an outgoing.
   The stately Votaress, with her towering funnels lost in the upper night, was running well inshore under a point, wrapped in a world-wide silence broken only by the placid outgo of her own vast breath, the soft rush of her torrential footsteps far below, and the answering rustle of the nearer shore. 1914, George W[ashington] Cable, “Questions”, in Gideon’s Band: A Tale of the Mississippi, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, page 37
   I suppose you have been getting a lot of deliveries and no outgoes. Is that about the size of it? 12 February 1946, John Taber, “Statement of Rear Adm. W. J. Carter, Chief of Bureau, Bureau of Supplies and Accounts, Accompanied by Capt. J. M. Bregar, Commander S. M. Trott, and E. Midkiff, Bureau of Supplies and Accounts”, in Robert P[ercy] Williams, editor, Second Supplemental Surplus Appropriation Rescission Bill, 1946: Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, Seventy-ninth Congress, Second Session, on the Second Supplemental Surplus Appropriation Rescission Bill, 1946[…], Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, →OCLC, page 526
   Thus the industry in Massachusetts subsists on a constant influx of cloth and outgo of garments which pass through the hands of the stitching contractors for an essential operation. 28 March 1949, Robert H[oughwout] Jackson, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States (delivering the court’s opinion), “United States v. Women’s Sportswear Manufacturers Association et al.”, in Walter Wyatt (reporter), United States Reports: Cases Adjudged in the Supreme Court at October Term, 1948[…], volume 336, Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 462
   The resulting output signal served as the reference that the measured heat inputs and outgos attempted to match. 1976 September, David Namkoong, “Description of System”, in Tests of a Reduced-scale Experimental Model of a Building Solar Heating–Cooling System (NASA Technical Memorandum; X-3416), Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, →OCLC, page 4
   In the case of those nutrient elements, such as N and S, which occur predominantly in organic combination, measurement of the balance between atmospheric inputs and drainage outgoes may indicate may indicate the degree of control or relative leakiness of the ecosystem, provided due allowance is made for short-term fluctuations that could be meaningless. 1983, J. L. Charley, B. N. Richards, “Nutrient Allocation in Plant Communities: Mineral Cycling in Terrestrial Ecosystems”, in O. L. Lange, P. S. Nobel, C. B. Osmond, H. Ziegler, editors, Physiological Plant Ecology IV: Ecosystem Processes: Mineral Cycling, Productivity and Man’s Influence (Encyclopedia of Plant Physiology, New Series; 12D), Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, →DOI, page 38
3. (archaic or obsolete)
   1. (countable) The means by which something flows or goes out; an outlet.
      The great Salt Lake of Utah is its principal body of water, and this has no visible outgo, though richly fed from various quarters. 1869, Samuel Bowles, “Introductory Chapter”, in Our New West. Records of Travel between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean.[…], Hartford, Conn.: Hartford Publishing Co.[…], →OCLC, page 26
      Of course the fact is not overlooked that the outgos of main drain traps are not usually ventilated against syphonage, but they afford an excellent example of a trap on a nearly horizontal pipe. 2 February 1882, D. [pseudonym], “Syphonage in Practice”, in The Sanitary Engineer, volume 5, number 10, New York, N.Y.: […] E. P. Coby & Co., →OCLC, page 208, columns 2–3
   2. (uncountable, rare) A (quantity of a) substance or thing that has flowed out; an outflow.
      It cannot be doubted that the same persons are here meant as are spoken of in the preceding chapter, for their scorn was the outgo of the same frivolous mind which is there said to distinguish them. 1870, Friedrich Bleek, “The Petrine Epistles”, in William Urwick, transl., edited by Johannes Friedrich Bleek, An Introduction to the New Testament.[…] (Clark’s Foreign Theological Library, Fourth Series; XXVI), volume II, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark,[…], →OCLC, § 217 (The Second Petrine Epistle), page 175
      In these experiments it is necessary to take account not only of the food eaten, but of the actual amount of this food which is used by the body. […] Estimates of the solids, liquids, and gases given off from his body must be obtained, for to carry out the experiment an exact balance must be made between the income and the outgo. 1899, H[erbert] W[illiam] Conn, “Is the Body a Machine?”, in The Story of the Living Machine: A Review of the Conclusions of Modern Biology in Regard to the Mechanism which Controls the Phenomena of Living Activity, New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC, part I (The Running of the Living Machine), pages 23–24
      And the arms of the scale of intake and outgo must likewise remain at level, and they do so maintain balance in health. 1912, Linda Burfield Hazzard, “When and Why to Fast”, in Fasting for the Cure of Disease, 4th edition, New York, N.Y.: The Physical Culture Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 37