tease out

British

verb

(tr, adverb) to extract (information) with difficulty

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

tease out Idioms

Lure out, obtain or extract with effort, as in We had a hard time teasing the wedding date out of him. This term alludes to the literal sense of tease, “untangle or release something with a pointed tool.” [Mid-1900s]

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

tease out

Investors will look to “the dot plot to tease out if this is a hike or a hiking cycle,” said Paul Eitelman, global chief investment strategist at Russell Investments.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 15, 2026

You need someone who can tease out those patterns and make decisions across different sets of controls.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 3, 2026

"These simulations allow us to tease out small effects to determine what actually happens, helping us to understand our observations."

From Science Daily ● Mar. 24, 2026

"That's really where we can tease out whether it's AI-generated or it's real."

From BBC ● Mar. 2, 2026

I will question her later and tease out her purpose.

From "Ophelia" by Lisa Klein

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023