out of line
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Behaving or speaking improperly
Literally: not in a straight line
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
‘ The same for anybody that gets out of line,’ he said calmly.
We taught her to stand in line. "
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “out of line” mean?
Behaving or speaking improperly Literally: not in a straight line
Is “out of line” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.