tease out

verb

teased out; teasing out; teases out

transitive verb

1
: to obtain by or as if by disentangling or freeing with a pointed instrument
2

Example Sentences

Recent Examples on the Web The reasons are hard to tease out. Sarah Mervosh, New York Times, 15 Oct. 2022 Tufts University president Tony Monaco believes the distinction is not easy to tease out. Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 14 May 2022 The resulting interaction is both utterly fascinating and, just as often, surprising in the humanistic warmth that the series is able to tease out. Vulture, 10 Mar. 2022 These include populations with differing rice consumption patterns relative to their total caloric intake and widely varying amounts of arsenic in water used to cook rice, which makes the risk from rice itself difficult to tease out. Cynthia Sass, Mph, Health.com, 20 Oct. 2021 These elements have been hard to disentangle in the air above land because the rough topography, changing land use, and varying heat create a complex set of variables that are hard to tease out. Nikk Ogasa, Science | AAAS, 25 May 2021 This study is far from the first time that this idea of hotter weather juicing home run stats has been proposed, but an ever-growing wealth of data in modern baseball and an increasingly robust set of statistical methods for teasing out the impacts of climate change are now available. Alex Fox, Smithsonian Magazine, 7 Apr. 2023 While teasing out causation in presidential politics is tricky, Reagan’s apostasy wounded Ford. Walter Shapiro, The New Republic, 3 Apr. 2023 Cronin’s screenplay is light on character development, but there’s a deep interest — in the tradition of Rosemary’s Baby or the more recent Huesera — in teasing out the terrors of motherhood. Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter, 17 Mar. 2023 See More

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'tease out.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

1828, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Time Traveler
The first known use of tease out was in 1828

Dictionary Entries Near tease out

Cite this Entry

“Tease out.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tease%20out. Accessed 6 Jun. 2023.

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
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