subs. (colloquial).—1. A holiday; an OUT (q.v.).
1860. HALIBURTON (‘Sam Slick’), The Season Ticket, No. vii. I once gave her an OUTING to London, and when she returned, I asked her how she liked it.
1864. Sun, 28 Dec., Review of Hotten’s The Slang Dictionary. There is no mention of a holiday term in very common use that we ought to have found here alphabetically recorded in ‘The Slang Dictionary’—meaning the phrase of an OUTING.
1879. PAYN, High Spirits (Adventure in a Forest). I only knew Epping Forest as a spot rarely visited save by the wild East Enders on their Sunday OUTINGS.
1885. The Field, 4 April. They got their OUTING which is a great deal.
2. (provincial).—See quot.
1847. HALLIWELL, A Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, etc., s.v. OUTING. A feast given to his friends by an apprentice, at the end of his apprenticeship: when he is out of his time. In some parts of the kingdom, this ceremony is termed by an apprentice and his friends ‘burying his wife.’
