flush out

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

flush out (third-person singular simple present flushes out, present participle flushing out, simple past and past participle flushed out)

1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see flush,‎ out.
2. (idiomatic) To drive out or expose something or someone, as a game bird or other game animal from cover.

   Synonyms: drive, flush, scare up (the latter especially of game birds)

   The dogs flushed out some doves.

   The army flushed out the enemy spy.

   • 2017, David Walliams [pseudonym; David Edward Williams], Bad Dad, London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, →ISBN:

     Fingers and Thumbs immediately started rushing around, wielding their iron bars as if going into battle. They whacked everything in sight – bushes, bins, even the burnt-out burger van – in an effort to flush out whoever had hurt their glorious leader.

3. (proscribed) To flesh out.
   • 1990, Robert E. Bergman, Thomas V. Moore, Managing Interactive Video/Multimedia Projects, Educational Technology,, →ISBN, page 45:

     It should serve to flush out the existing ideas, generate new ones, insure that the approach chosen is responsive to the goals, and perhaps most importantly, get the whole team to sign up and take ownership of the application approach.

   • 2009, Laura Bell, 101 Things You Didn’t Learn in Harvard Business School, TotalRecall Publications,, →ISBN, page 68:

     Brainstorming with friends and colleagues can help you flush out the details of the idea.

   • 2014, George Berkowski, How to Build a Billion Dollar App, Little, →ISBN:

     As you flush out a great design, start prototyping it.

To flesh out an idea is to pursue it further. To flush out an idea would literally mean to stop pursuing it.

• outflush