Usage examples (5)

• Verb (used with object) : His cruelty out-Herods Herod
• Simon-Pure Southerner from the very fact of their nativity, and visited with the most horrible retribution wherever they have shown a leaning toward the land of their birth,...
• (For Virgil and Nativity play and prophecy see authorities in Comparetti, "Virgil in Middles Ages", p. 310 sqq.) "To out-herod Herod", i.e. to over-act, dates from
• Every man’s invention seemed on the stretch, and each extravagant simile seemed to set one half of your men of wit into a brown study to produce something which should...