fan out

phrasal verb

fanned out; fanning out; fans out

: to spread apart or to cause (something) to spread apart

The police fanned out across the park in search of the suspect.

He fanned out his fingers.

Examples of fan out in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Almost a year and a half later, in November 2021, Herder ascended the mountain with a crew of Sky Island Alliance volunteers who fanned out to find and assess the ecological health of springs that sustain plant and animal life and contribute to Tucson’s streams and groundwater recharge. —

Brandon Loomis, The Arizona Republic, 20 May 2024 Exactly one week later, on a cool, cloudy Wednesday morning, the police fanned out across the Jungle. —

Photographs Todd Heisler, New York Times, 19 May 2024 One photo showed all three of Garcia’s daughters posing while fanning out their dresses. —

Emma Kershaw, Peoplemag, 18 May 2024 Poder Latinx's canvassers were fanning out to help eligible voters in Latino neighborhoods join the rolls or update their registrations. —

Ashley Lopez, NPR, 16 May 2024 Panfish will school up and use their tails to fan out individual beds that are linked together in a honeycomb formation. —

Shaye Baker, Field & Stream, 9 May 2024 In the aftermath of the attacks, Israeli aid groups fanned out across the country trying to support the victims of the Hamas rampage. —

Majd Al-Waheidi, NPR, 5 May 2024 A bit of context: Just before dawn on the seventeenth, dozens of students had fanned out across the east lawn to demand that the university curtail investments in companies with ties to Israel. —

Nina Berman, The New Yorker, 2 May 2024 In those days, even winning wasn’t enough to bring the fans out. —

Jerry McDonald, The Mercury News, 12 Apr. 2024

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'fan out.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.