On some podcasts I listen to, I’ve noticed that the presenters use the phrase close out when talking about the end of the show. For example, they say things like “Finally we will close out with an item about …”, or “It’s now time to close out the show.”
To my British ears this expression sounds a bit strange – the podcasts I hear it in are made by Americans, or by British people living in America. In British podcasts and radio programmes people would be more likely to say something like, “Finally an item about …”, or “We have now come to the end of this episode of …”, “Here comes the end”, “That is it for this episode”.
In the UK you might say that you close up a shop or other business at the end of each day.
Is this phrase used in other contexts?
Does it sound normal/strange to you?
So I have now come to the end of this post. It’s time to close out, or not, depending on your version of English.
In your example, this would be the sense of bringing an activity (the show) to an end. You can have a close out sale – where all the remaining stock of a business is sold. I’ve seen this used in sports where you refer to a sequence of events that “close out the quarter” or “close out the half”. You can also “close out an account”, like a checking account where you withdraw all the funds and then close the account.
“close out sale”
In the UK, that would be a closing down sale. The verb to close down, typically used (in either a reflexive or non-reflexive sense) of a business, organisation, department etc., carries the sense of finality, i.e. ceasing (or causing to cease) definitively to exist or operate.
Not always all _that_ final, though, David. Not so very long ago most radio stations in the UK used to *close down* (go off the air) at around midnight — but they’d be back broadcasting again just a few hours later early the next morning.
(Blow! I’ve forgotten how to do bold and italics in *Omniglot* comments _again_!)