fill-out

English

Etymology

From the phrasal verb fill out.

Noun

fill-out (plural fill-outs)

1. An option provided as one of a number of possible answers to a question in a form.
   • 1955, George Worthington, Factory - Volume 113, page 226:

     All moves use the same form, but the fill-outs are different.

   • 2000, John Lloyd, Veronica Dahl, Ulrich Furbach, Computational Logic — CL 2000, page 1094:

     This layer is primarily responsible for automatically locating and extracting dynamic data from Web sites, i.e data that can only be obtained by form fill-outs.

2. An extra car added to a freight train in order to achieve a minimum tonnage.
   • 1936, Awards First Division, National Railroad Adjustment Board:

     They served the industries located along the tracks, performed such freight-house switching as became necessary, set cars off or put cars on passenger trains when necessary, lined up fill-outs for through-freight trains, made up the locals originating at Idaho Falls, and set cars off and put cars on the through freight trains 277 and 278.

   • 1937, The Traffic World - Volume 59, page 143:

     When sufficient quantities of these types of freight are not available, cars containing ordinary freight are added as "tonnage fill-outs" to bring the train up to the required minimum tonnage.

   • 1952, Car Foremen's Association of Chicago, Proceedings - Volumes 53-54, page 38:

     Close cooperation between yard masters and inspection forces at major terminals can also make it possible to service journal boxes on fill-outs before they are incorporated in road trains.

3. Something extra that is added to increase the size of something.
   • 1955, Report - David W. Taylor Model Basin - Issue 916, page 195:

     All fill-outs should be packed with \p's so nothing will be printed.

   • 1958, Brainard Cheney, This is Adam: a novel, page 42:

     She's the main deal, we're just the fill-outs!

   • 1964, Ag Chem & Commercial Fertilizer - Volume 19, page 64:

     At the other extreme, were those who bought conservatively for their own manufacturing needs and retail sails. They picked up spot fill-outs when they ran short.

   • 1966, Charles Osborne, Opera, page 223:

     One seldom hears a text sung in which 50 per cent of the lines are not mere fill-outs — either, on the mechanical level, excuses for rhymes or scansion or, on a more justifiable level, additions of emotional weight by mere reiteration of intellectual points already made.

   • 2010, Tilman Skowroneck, Beethoven the Pianist, page 182:

     As is typical for the period, his left-hand notation includes a mixture of continuo bass lines and standard fill-outs such as Alberti basses.

4. (astronomy) The amount by which a star in a binary system extends beyond its Roche lobe.
   • 1972, Acta Astronomica - Volumes 22-23, page 108:

     Тheoretical amplitudes of primary minima Аm_s (transits) versus the mass-ratio for different inclinations and fill-outs.

   • 2012, Interacting Binaries, page 61:

     The stars TZ Boo and Y Sex do not have their fill-outs well determined.

Anagrams

• toilful