out-of-doors

See also: out of doors

English

Adverb

out-of-doors (comparative more out-of-doors, superlative most out-of-doors)

1. outdoors; outside.
   • 1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, volume 1, London: James R. Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., page 29:

     Besides the jar of contrast there came to her a chill self-reproach that she had not returned sooner, to help her mother in these domesticities, instead of indulging herself out-of-doors.

Noun

out-of-doors

1. outdoors

Adjective

out-of-doors (comparative more out-of-doors, superlative most out-of-doors)

1. (archaic) Primarily in the open rather than under the cover of habitation.
   • 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XXV, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 270:

     Three children, with the rich brown and richer crimson colour, and the bright black eyes which mark a southern extraction, were rolling on the grass at a little distance; and close beside the fire were seated two men, with red kerchiefs knitted round their close-curled dark hair. There was something in the complexions and the out-of-doors life that at once carried the Italians back to their own country.