MAKING OUT Synonyms: 138 Similar and Opposite Words

making out

verb

present participle of make out

as in coping

to meet one's day-to-day needs we're not rich, but we're making out all right

Synonyms & Similar Words

Relevance

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

as in knowing

to have a clear idea of I can't quite make out what she is trying to say

Synonyms & Similar Words

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

as in pretending

to take on a false or deceptive appearance he tried to make out that he didn't mind losing his job, but friends suspected he was desperately worried

Synonyms & Similar Words

as in deriving

to form an opinion or reach a conclusion through reasoning and information as best as I can make out, the police were informed of the incident but didn't think it was worth investigating

Synonyms & Similar Words

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Recent Examples of making out Likewise, this season, dancers making out at Diesel made spectators part of the performance. — Joan Kennedy, Vogue, 12 Oct. 2026 That’s no longer what, a few years ago, might have been described as a cautious approach, not when audiences are making out-of-nowhere titles like Obsession and Backrooms into buzzy hits and craving something new. — Alison Willmore, Vulture, 9 Oct. 2026 And then the other thing was that my friends who were in the audience told me that people in the audience were making out, not only dancing, but actually making out. — Shaad D’souza, Pitchfork, 7 Oct. 2026 Axl eventually contacted Vance, my DP, directly to shoot the footage of him and two girls making out in the car. — Jon Blistein, Rolling Stone, 15 Sep. 2026 The book has the teens making out the first night things went from friends to something more, but the show took it to another level with Bret and Debbie having sex on a lounge chair at a party. — Entertainment Weekly, 13 Aug. 2026 On the night of the Sex Purge, the streets are flooded with attractive, thin, largely heterosexual couples making out all over the place. — Katie Walsh, Los Angeles Times, 6 Aug. 2026 This surge is driven by state funding compacts and a commitment to growing California undergraduate enrollment, making out-of-state admission increasingly competitive. — Christopher Rim, Forbes.com, 4 Aug. 2026 On July 1, Rodriguez and Hayden were spotted making out at Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin’s White Party, one month after his split from Jaclyn Cordeiro. — Natasha Dye, PEOPLE, 28 July 2026

Recent Examples of Synonyms for making out

Verb

Research has also found that across generational groups, greater user tendency to engage in social comparison, together with greater maladaptive ways of coping with emotions, is associated with more symptoms of anger, anxiety, and depression.

— Ashwini Nadkarni, Time, 24 Oct. 2026
When people have little relief from stress in a chaotic environment, their brains have difficulty coping with the ongoing prediction errors, Friston, McEwen and neuroscientist Achim Peters argued in a 2017 article.

— Maia Szalavitz, Scientific American, 20 Oct. 2026

Definition of coping

Verb

Here is something worth knowing about the category called rare disease.

— Miranda Pappas, STAT, 22 Oct. 2026
Those details sketch an almost perfect outline of the experiences of Aleysha Ortiz, who graduated from Hartford Public Schools in 2024 without knowing how to read.

— Theo Peck-Suzuki, Hartford Courant, 22 Oct. 2026

Definition of knowing

Verb

Smart did not enter pleas to charges of being armed, or pretending to be armed, in a way that may cause fear and with making an unlawful threat.

— ABC News, ABC News, 22 Oct. 2026
Lee uses this to his advantage, pretending to be a pidgin-speaking Chinese immigrant to protect himself from white people’s suspicion and mistrust.

— Roxana Hadadi, Vulture, 21 Oct. 2026

Definition of pretending

Verb

There is just enough wry humor—think Shaun of the Dead—sprinkled throughout to keep things from getting too grim, often deriving from Bryan’s cluelessness and general lack of skills.

— Jennifer Ouellette, ArsTechnica, 22 Sep. 2026
The Chiefs finished dead last in the NFL with 362 yards deriving from explosive rushes last season.

— Sam McDowell, Kansas City Star, 15 Sep. 2026

Definition of deriving

Verb

In 2025 the hyperscalers alone poured more than $300 billion into data centers, chips, and grid capacity, and that spend is doing real work in the top-line growth figures.

— Stephen Messer, Fortune, 23 Oct. 2026
What employers are doing Kostka says there have recently been fewer health insurers in her area to choose from.

— Alana Semuels, Time, 22 Oct. 2026

Definition of doing

Verb

During that period and beyond, Hawthorne kept a series of notebooks, which scholars see as an important primary source for understanding the ideas and descriptions that informed his early writings and later novels.

— Robert S. Levine, The Conversation, 26 Oct. 2026
The science writer Ann Finkbender wrote a charming essay about understanding this principle of life in Last Word on Nothing.

— Shayla Love, Vox, 25 Oct. 2026

Definition of understanding

Verb

As for 5-star quarterback Julian Lewis, who was demoted last week, there seems to be more to the situation than Deion is intentionally letting on.

— Trey Wallace OutKick, FOXNews.com, 5 Oct. 2026
But if the contract has more to do with his absence than the Steelers are letting on?

— Mike DeFabo, New York Times, 14 Sep. 2026

Definition of letting on

Verb

Moghadam also said that Tehran would study the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement that includes Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey before deciding whether to support it, describing it as a potential instrument for unity.

— ABC News, ABC News, 24 Oct. 2026
Florida voters are deciding whether to pass a constitutional amendment that would lower property taxes for some — but not all — homeowners by raising the state’s homestead tax exemption.

— Catherine Odom, Miami Herald, 24 Oct. 2026