out-Tarzan

present singular third person out-Tarzans · participle present out-Tarzaning · participle past out-Tarzaned · past out-Tarzaned

1. To perform better than the fictional character Tarzan, especially at feats of athleticism.

   Mature is the husky who out-Tarzaned Tarzan in "50.000.000 B-C."

   1940 November 17, The Sunday Times, Perth, page 7, column 1

   4 more examples

   One wishes to be anew Smollett; another, to out-Tarzan the chronicler of apes.

   1926, Albert E. Bull, Authorship And Journalism, London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons, page 49

   "Robin Hood" is melodrama - roistering, rowdy, swasbuckling melodrama, that brings back a whiff of the dear old pit where one sat in one's 'teens, and a taste of old peanuts as well as nostalgia, and almost forces a cheer when Errol out-Tarzan's Tarzan or plays quarter-staff with Little John.

   1938 July 10, The Sun, Sydney, page 7, column 4

   They are Chicago bus drivers who take to the sea on a yacht, and end up by out-tarzaning Tarzan on an uncharted south sea island populated by hundreds of beautiful girls, a platoon of villains and more wild animals than are caged in the average zoo.

   1943 May 30, The Sunday Times, Perth, page 8, column 3

   In one sense Sequoyah out-Tarzaned Tarzan; but in another sense, unlike Tarzan, he merely copied others.

   1986, Roy Harris, The Origin of Writing, London: Duckworth, page 12