Read along with the three podcasts, or open the full dictionary entry for Make out for the definition, Arabic meaning, synonyms and example sentences.
Narrator: Today's word is "Make-Out" — phrase (verb), pronounced /ˌmeɪk ˈaʊt/, with the stress on "out".
Narrator: Make out means to manage to see, hear or understand something with difficulty.
Narrator: In plain English, you just about work it out.
Narrator: It joins make with out, an old pattern meaning to bring something into view.
Narrator: A common collocation is "make out a shape", which describes glimpsing something in poor light.
Narrator: It differs from "see", because make out implies effort against fog, noise or bad handwriting.
Narrator: In a second sense, you can make out a cheque, or make out that something is true when it is not.
Narrator: Navigation, forensics, document scanning and everyday speech rely on the phrase.
Narrator: So remember: make out means to just manage to perceive or understand.
Speaker A: Can you read this doctor's handwriting?
Speaker B: Barely — I can MAKE OUT two words! From make plus out, an old pattern meaning to bring into view.
Speaker A: So effort is implied?
Speaker B: Considerable effort.
Speaker A: Example sentences?
Speaker B: "I could just make out the coastline", sailing. "Make the cheque out to the charity", banking. "He made out that he had never agreed", disputes.
Speaker A: Common mistakes?
Speaker B: Two words as a verb, and remember that the noun spelling "makeout" is informal American and means something quite different.
Speaker A: Close relatives?
Speaker B: Discern is its cousin, distinguish its twin, and decipher an alternative — yet make out keeps its squinting charm!
Speaker B: Let's use "make out" in AI prompts — useful for OCR tooling and audio transcription.
Speaker A: How for OCR?
Speaker B: Faint scans.
Prompt: Flag any field in this scanned form where the text cannot be made out reliably.
Speaker A: And audio?
Speaker B: Noisy clips.
Prompt: Mark the timestamps in this recording where the speaker cannot be made out.
Speaker A: Could it help images?
Speaker B: Yes, for alt text.
Prompt: Write alt text describing only what can clearly be made out in this photograph.
Speaker A: One more?
Speaker B: Support.
Prompt: Draft a reply asking the customer to resend a receipt we could not make out.
Make out — meaning in Arabic & definition More M courses GL Dictionary