stake out

stake out (third-person singular simple present stakes out, present participle staking out, simple past and past participle staked out)

1. (transitive) To watch a location or people, generally covertly.
2. (transitive) To mark off the limits by stakes.

   stake out land

   to stake out a new road

   • 1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., →OCLC; republished as chapter VI, in Hugo Gernsback, editor, Amazing Stories, (please specify |part=I, II, or III), New York, N.Y.: Experimenter Publishing, 1927, →OCLC:

     Bradley, von Schoenvorts and I, with Miss La Rue's help, staked out the various buildings and the outer wall. When the day was done, we had quite an array of logs nicely notched and ready for our building operations on the morrow, and we were all tired, for after the buildings had been staked out we all fell in and helped with the logging

3. (intransitive, croquet) To end the game by hitting the stake peg in the middle of the court.

• stakeout

• outskate, outtakes, takeouts, takes out