come out of the closet

English

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Verb

come out of the closet (third-person singular simple present comes out of the closet, present participle coming out of the closet, simple past came out of the closet, past participle come out of the closet)

1. (intransitive, idiomatic) To tell others about one's homosexuality, bisexuality, transness, or any minority or disapproved-of identity, belief, preference, etc., where previously this had been kept secret.

   She finally came out of the closet to her religious family regarding her atheism.

   • 1972, Lou Reed (lyrics and music), “Make Up”, in Transformer:

     Now, we're coming out / Out of our closets / Out on the streets / Yeah, we're coming out

Synonyms

• come out, coming out

Antonyms

• remain in the closet
• woodwork (verb)

Derived terms

• come out of the broom closet (“come out as a pagan”)
• coming-out

 

Related terms

• come out of the woodwork (“appear as if from nowhere”)

Translations

to tell others about a secret belief or preference

• Catalan: sortir de l'armari (ca)
• Chinese:

  Cantonese: 出櫃／出柜 (ceot¹ gwai⁶)

  Mandarin: 出櫃／出柜 (zh) (chūguì) (slang)

• Danish: komme ud af skabet, springe ud
• Dutch: uit de kast komen
• Esperanto: elŝrankiĝi
• Estonian: kapist välja tulema
• Finnish: tulla ulos kaapista (fi)
• French: sortir du placard (fr), faire son coming out
• German: sich outen (de)
• Greek: εκδηλώνομαι (el) (ekdilónomai)
• Hungarian: előbújik (hu), coming outol
• Indonesian: melela (id)
• Irish: tar amach
• Italian: dichiararsi (it), uscire allo scoperto
• Japanese: カミングアウトする (kamingu-auto suru)
• Norwegian: komme (no) ut (no) av (no) skapet

  Nynorsk: koma ut av skapet

• Polish: ujawniać (się) impf, ujawnić (się) pf
• Portuguese: sair do armário (pt)
• Russian: выходи́ть из подпо́лья impf (vyxodítʹ iz podpólʹja), вы́йти из подпо́лья pf (výjti iz podpólʹja)
• Spanish: salir del clóset (Latin America), salir del armario (es) (mainly Spain), salir del placard, salir del ropero
• Swedish: komma ut ur garderoben (sv), komma ut (sv)
• Turkish: açılmak (tr)

Further reading

• coming out on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• closeted on Wikipedia.Wikipedia