tune out

English

Etymology

From tune + out.

Pronunciation

• Audio (AU)

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Verb

tune out (third-person singular simple present tunes out, present participle tuning out, simple past and past participle tuned out)

1. (idiomatic, transitive, intransitive) To stop paying attention to; to ignore; to zone out.

   I have a hard time tuning out a television that is on.

   • 2016, Nathanael Johnson, Unseen City, →ISBN, page 123:

     Ants are everywhere, in such abundance that we tune them out like we tune out traffic noise.

2. To change the channel or frequency away from.

   I was tired of talk radio so I tuned out of that station and tuned into one playing all music.

Synonyms

• (ignore): space out, zone out; see also Thesaurus:ignore

Hypernyms

• tune

Translations

zone out — see zone out

change the channel

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 换台 (zh) (huàntái), 调台, 换频道

• Finnish: vaihtaa kanavaa
• Portuguese: trocar estação

See also

• tune in