Outer

Nanny Broome was looking up at the outer wall. Just under the ceiling there were three lunette windows, heavily barred and blacked out in the normal way by centuries of grime. Their bases were on a level with the pavement outside, a narrow way which was several feet lower than the road behind the house.

'Phil Cornish' [a snowdrop variety] is like a cross between a pixie hat and a pagoda, with elegant upswept outers [outer petals] marked in a green colour-wash at the top and warpaint slashes at the lower end.

We ordered two cartons with twelve outers in each.

From the early 90s, these were some of the fiercest debates raging in the gay press and in gay and straight bars worldwide as blabbermouths blabbed, sometimes just for the sheer hell of it, and gay celebrities ran for cover or bit the bullet and pipped the outers to the post.

The 51.4 per cent to 48.6 per cent victory of the "outers" broke the back of the Labour government.

Meanwhile, outers are disporting themselves on TV in luminous green ties, hand-woven by first years at the Dronefield Academy for the Sartorially Challenged.

And 'I like to wear a silly hat; I get camper by the hour. I'm Will Young and I'm gay. Did you know I was gay? I hid it for a while. But now I'm out, I'm outer than you would believe'.[…]

[…] outer-than-out literary lions like Edmund White and David Ehrenstein would later note, this final proof that the[…]