Meaning & use
tire them out
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Meanings
phrasephrasal verb
to make people or animals so tired that they have no energy left, often deliberately through activity.
Grammar: Takes an object; the pronoun goes in the middle: tire them out. A noun object can go before or after 'out': tire the children out.
Patterns
- tire someone out
- tire out someone
- tire yourself out
The long walk really tired them out, and they slept all afternoon.
She plays loud music to tire the puppy out before bedtime.
Don't tire yourself out before the exam.
phrasephrasal verbfigurative
to make someone lose interest or patience with something, so they stop wanting it.
Grammar: Often used with 'of': tire them out of something, meaning make them lose enthusiasm.
Patterns
- tire someone out of something
- tire them out with something
The constant delays tired us out of complaining.
He tired them out with his endless questions about the same topic.
Common combinations
- tire the kids out
- A trip to the park will tire the kids out.
- tire yourself out
- Don't tire yourself out cleaning the whole house today.
- completely tire someone out
- The hike completely tired us out.
- tire them out before bed
- We play ball to tire them out before bed.
Synonyms and how they differ
- exhaust
- Stronger and more formal than 'tire out'; it suggests total loss of energy, not just tiredness.
- wear out
- Very close in meaning but often suggests a gradual draining over time rather than one activity.
- fatigue
- A formal or medical word; it describes causing tiredness, not the everyday act of keeping someone busy.
Opposites
Word family
- tired adjective
- Feeling that you need rest or sleep.
- tiring adjective
- Making you feel tired.
- tirelessly adverb
- In a way that shows no tiredness, with steady energy.
Commonly confused: tire them out or tire of?
tire them out vs tire of
'Tire of something' means to become bored with it, without an object pronoun in the middle: I tired of the game. 'Tire them out' means to make someone exhausted.
Practice
The children were wild, so we took them to the park to ___.
Choose one answer.
With a pronoun object, the pronoun goes between the verb and 'out': tire them out. 'Tire out them' is ungrammatical, and 'tire them' alone does not have the phrasal meaning.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “tire them out”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.