Meanings
plural comb-outs
- countableidiomaticinformaluncountableThe identification and removal of someone or something.
- countableidiomaticslanguncountableThe act of sorting out.
I’d like to see a good comb-out up there, to catch out these sort of people.
1943, Celia Fremlin, “Background: The Town and The Newcomers”, in Harrisson, Tom, editor, Mass-Observation War Factory: A Report, quoted in Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Vintage/Ebury, published 1987, →ISBN, →OCLC, →OL, page 16, lines 15–162 more examples
McCann and I took ten men each and made a systematic comb-out of the Gardens. Every sniper we found we shot out of hand.
1940, Operator 1384, McCann the Spy, quoted in Green's Dictionary of Slang, page 263[…]we were stopped by ten police mobile[…]this was one of the periodic comb-outs of streets in which the police hoped to catch criminals unawares.
1969 [1933], A. R. Cooper, Born to Fight, London, page 224
Synonyms & antonyms
nounAn act of combing out hair.
More synonyms by meaning
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
Deverbal from comb out. First attested in 1915–1920 (sense 1 and sense 2). First attested in 1940 (sense 3).
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
comb-out. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/comb-out
“comb-out.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/comb-out. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “comb-out,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/comb-out.
Source: comb-out on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.