Darwin out

• darwin out

An allusion to Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution.

Darwin out (third-person singular simple present Darwins out, present participle Darwinning out, simple past and past participle Darwinned out)

1. (slang, humorous, somewhat derogatory, somewhat uncommon) To remove (a person) from the gene pool when they engage in foolish, thoughtless, or reckless behavior.
   • 1979, Gerald Rosen, The Carmen Miranda Memorial Flagpole, A Novel, page 94:

     Let's face it, it's just not possible. A guy like that in The Bronx could never make it to the age where he could get a license. He'd be Darwinned-out before he was twelve.

   • 2003 March 9, cquirke, “excuses, excuses, excuses...”, in alt.comp.virus‎^[1] (Usenet):

     Ah, that's intent again. Selection pressure darwins out that which is not best fitted to survive, but a new mutation is by definition yet to be filtered in this way, so all bets are off :-)

   • 2004 December 6, fasgnādh, “Re: PM advocates special treatment for aborigines”, in alt.atheism‎^[2] (Usenet):

     See above. The problem (dunderheadedness) has been precisely pointed out, and the solution (darwinning out the dross) is happening as we speak.

   • 2008, Jonathan Nasaw, Twenty-Seven Bones, The Most Terrifying Novel You Will Read this Year:

     The prisoners who'd survived, we later learned, had done so only by killing, stacking, and standing on the bodies of the ones that hadn't, which meant that nature had Darwinned out all but the meanest of the mean and the toughest of tough.

   • 2012, Lawrence W. Baggett, In the Dark on the Sunny Side: A Memoir of an Out-of-Sight Mathematician, page 17:

     I know you're not meant to cut toward yourself, and that fatal instinct should have been Darwined out by now, but it does provide a small “geometric design error” component to my injury story, a point my attorney might well use, should we decide later to sue the human body factory.

• Darwin Award