stake out

present singular third person stakes out · participle present staking out · participle past staked out · past staked out

1. transitiveTo watch a location or people, generally covertly.
2. transitiveTo mark off the limits by stakes.

   stake out land

   2 more examples

   to stake out a new road

   Bradley, von Schoenvorts and I, with Miss La Rue's help, staked out the various buildings and the outer wall. When the day was done, we had quite an array of logs nicely notched and ready for our building operations on the morrow, and we were all tired, for after the buildings had been staked out we all fell in and helped with the logging

   1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., →OCLC; republished as chapter VI, in Hugo Gernsback, editor, Amazing Stories, (please specify |part=I to III), New York, N.Y.: Experimenter Publishing, 1927, →OCLC

3. intransitivecroquetTo end the game by hitting the stake peg in the middle of the court.