Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. bizarre, extreme.

1956		‘James Updyke’ [W.R. Burnett] It’s Always Four O’Clock 116: It’s not just an expression, ‘goose pimples.’ When I hear something ‘way out there in music, I get them. I know a musician who claims that when he hears real fine and odd stuff, his beard starts to grow.
1983		R. Price Breaks 45: All those out-there guys who had mailed in coupons from the back of comics.
1992		D. Burke Street Talk 2 99: She’s really out there!
2000		Observer Mag. 27 Feb. 26: He’s done eight or nine of them [i.e. films]. ‘Really out-there shit,’ he concedes. ‘Nobody can believe that it’s me actually thinking this up.’.
2009		J. Rotter Unknown Knowns 7: I wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking my behavior was out there.
2023		D. Whish-Wilson I Am Already Dead 87: ‘Jessica was apparently pretty “out there”, a dominant kind of person like her father’.

2. under the influence of drugs.

1977		L. Bangs in Psychotic Reactions (1988) 234: He smokes a lot and when he gets really out there on it makes with cartoon non sequiturs that nobody else can fathom.
2005		E. White My Lives 124: Yeah, you’re way out there, aren’t you?
2010		K. Richards Life 206: Johnny [Lennon] and I were so out there.

3. important, fashionable, ‘in the swing’.

1993		E. Richards Cocaine True 14: He wants sixty-five dollar cool shades. They’re out there in shades.
1998		K. Sampson Awaydays 129: You think you’re really . . . out there, don’t you?
2007		B. Coleman Check the Technique 368: ‘[Music producer] Pete [Rock] was out there, man, he was hot’.

4. (US black) involved in gang life; ‘there’ being the street.

2000

P. Beatty Tuff 227: ‘When you going to put me down, big man?’ ‘You know I ain’t out there like that right now, Shorty.’.

5. (US black) in a subservient, victimized position.

1995		(con. 1985–90) P. Bourjois In Search of Respect 182: Niggas has me mopping floors for them and shit. I used to be out there [a dominated victim].
2008		W.D. Myers Game 58: ‘I ain’t putting myself out there in the Man’s game’.

6. (US) in the world of dating, searching for new relationships.

2007

W.D. Myers ‘the life you need to have’ in What They Found 59: Abeni said I was too quiet and shy for my own good, that I would never find a man if I didn’t learn to ‘put myself out there’.