point out - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From point and out. Instead of pointing to a particular thing, the term implies pointing to one particular thing out of several similar things, or to a thing in a scene where it might not be readily seen.

point out (third-person singular simple present points out, present participle pointing out, simple past and past participle pointed out)

  1. (transitive, idiomatic) To identify among a group of similar subjects, or in a scene where the subject might not be readily seen or noticed, with a gesture of the body.
    He pointed out the little brown bird in the tree.
    She pointed out the two drummers in the class.
    • 1953 August, Basil M. Bazley, “Carlisle in 1905”, in Railway Magazine, page 507:
      I have often been amused by travellers pointing out, first the Eden, just north of the station, and then the Esk, which young Lochinvar swam, as the Border; the real boundary is, of course, the little river Sark, just south of the Caledonian station at Gretna; […] .
    • 2006 May 9, Penn Jillette, Michael Goudeau, quoting Chris, 22:22 from the start, in Penn Radio‎[1]:
      I was in the Woodley Park–Zoo in D.C. and mom and sister were waiting to see the pandas, so me and my pops broke away to check out the monkey house. Well, there was a beautiful teacher, I mean we're talking a ten, she was blond, had a low-cut dress on, just gorgeous. And she has about eight or nine students and she's pointing out all the different monkeys. And me and my dad noticed this huge orangutan kind of fiddling with himself.
    • 2015 February 2, Laurel Deedrick-Mayne, A Wake For The Dreamland, FriesenPress, →ISBN, page 24:
      "...The storage room is about, oh, three doors down, on the left. I'll point it out as we go by. Pay attention so you know where you have to come back to. Only then it'll be — let me see — about five doors down on your right."
  2. (figuratively, idiomatic) To tell, remind, indicate.
    I would just like to point out that we need to finish our meeting by 9 o'clock.
    • 1957, Chung-cheng (Kai-shek) Chiang, Soviet Russia in China: A Summing-up at Seventy‎[2], New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 146:
      On November 15 our Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed Soviet ambassador Petrov of this decision. At the same time I sent a message to President Harry S. Truman, pointing out that Soviet Russia's treaty violations and bad faith in Manchuria not only were detrimental to China's territorial integrity and unification, but also constituted a serious threat to peace and order in East Asia, and that the only way to prevent any further deterioration of the situation would be for China and the United States to take positive and coordinated actions.
    • 1962 May, G. Freeman Allen, “Traffic control on the Great Northern Line”, in Modern Railways, page 343:
      As a Hitchin signalman once pointed out to me, when a regulating quandary arises concerning a fast-moving Class A train there is no time to consult Control and get their answer before the express is on one's doorstep.

identify with a bodily gesture

tell, remind, indicate to someone