Read along with the three podcasts, or open the full dictionary entry for Out of control for the definition, Arabic meaning, synonyms and example sentences.
Narrator: Today's word is "Out-Of-Control" — phrase (adjective), pronounced /ˌaʊt əv kənˈtrəʊl/, with the stress on "trol".
Narrator: Out of control means no longer managed, limited or guided by anybody.
Narrator: In plain English, nothing is holding it back.
Narrator: It joins out of with control, from Old French contreroller, to check against a roll.
Narrator: A common collocation is "an out-of-control lorry", which describes a vehicle nobody can steer.
Narrator: It differs from "difficult", because difficult still allows management, while out of control does not.
Narrator: In a second sense, it describes spending, crowds or inboxes that have outgrown all limits.
Narrator: News reporting, safety work, finance and operations rely on the phrase.
Narrator: So remember: out of control means nobody is steering any more.
Speaker A: Why hyphenate it before a noun?
Speaker B: Because it works as one adjective! OUT OF CONTROL comes from control, Old French contreroller.
Speaker A: And after the verb?
Speaker B: No hyphens needed.
Speaker A: Example sentences?
Speaker B: "An out-of-control fire closed the road", news. "The inbox is out of control", work. "Prices are out of control", economics.
Speaker A: Common mistakes?
Speaker B: Hyphenate only before a noun, and remember that "out of control" always keeps the of.
Speaker A: Close relatives?
Speaker B: Unchecked is its cousin, uncontrollable its twin, and runaway an alternative — yet out of control keeps its headline charm!
Speaker B: Let's use "out of control" in AI prompts — useful for alerting systems and status pages.
Speaker A: How for alerts?
Speaker B: Severity wording.
Prompt: Define severity levels that reserve out of control for the most serious incidents.
Speaker A: And status pages?
Speaker B: Honest updates.
Prompt: Write a status update that admits the retry loop was out of control without alarming users.
Speaker A: Could it help dashboards?
Speaker B: Yes, for charts.
Prompt: Highlight any metric on this dashboard whose growth looks out of control.
Speaker A: One more?
Speaker B: Moderation.
Prompt: Draft rules for pausing a chat room whose activity has gone out of control.
Out of control — meaning in Arabic & definition More O courses GL Dictionary