out of bounds

Meaning of out of bounds in English
 
out of bounds
idiom (also out-of-bounds)

If an area is out of bounds, people are not allowed to go there:
The garden is open to the public, but the house is out of bounds.
The female dormitory was out-of-bounds for male students.
The reporter entered offices and other out-of-bounds areas that housed confidential documents.
 
SPORTS   mainly US
If a ball is out of bounds, it is not within the playing area:
He hit his first two shots out of bounds.
One of the players booted the ball out-of-bounds.
The ball sailed towards the out-of-bounds fence.
 SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases
Forbidding and banning things
 more results »
You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

General terms used in ball sports
Surfaces on which sports take place

(Definition of out of bounds from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)
out-of-bounds | INTERMEDIATE ENGLISH
out-of-bounds
adjective, adverb [ not gradable ] (also out of bounds)
US/;o;t·;v;ba;ndz/
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(in sports) not within the playing area:
The ball was ruled out of bounds.
The ball went out-of-bounds.
 out-of-bounds
 
If something is out-of-bounds, it is beyond the usual limits of acceptable behavior or the usual standards:
The President claimed the Senator's comments were out of bounds and damaging to reform.
(Definition of out-of-bounds from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)
EXAMPLES of out of bounds
out of bounds
The solution might be found in the consumer market -- some companies are developing ways to take down out-of-bounds drones using radio waves.
From TechCrunch
If that's an out-of-bounds budget, they should just hand back the rights.
From Los Angeles Times
Administrative decentralization of labor law meant that large parts of the country were out-of-bounds for unions because many state governments acted contrary to national policy.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.