outta

Outta is an informal contraction of the phrase out of. It is used primarily in casual spoken English and in informal writing to represent the rapid pronunciation of “out of.” In written form, outta often signals a relaxed or emphatic tone and is more common in American English, in lyrics and dialogue, or in quoted speech.

As a preposition or adverbial phrase, outta functions where standard English would use “out of”: for example, “I’m outta ideas” means I have no more ideas, and “They ran outta time” means they ran out of time. It also appears in common expressions such as outta here, outta control, and outta town. The standard spellings would be out of here, out of control, and out of town.

The spelling outta follows casual phonetic rendering and reflects speech patterns rather than formal grammar. The form is nonstandard and generally avoided in formal writing, journalism, and academic contexts, but it is widely encountered in dialogue, song lyrics, social media, and other informal texts where a colloquial tone is desired.

Origin and usage notes: outta emerges from the general tendency in English to elide or compress “out of” in rapid speech, yielding a single, recognizable unit in writing that captures that spoken feel. While not a separate word, it functions as a colloquialism representing the combination of words and the speaker’s informal register.

See also: out of, contractions in English, slang.