out of station
Indian English: out of town, away from one's usual city or workplace, typically for work or family reasons.
Definitions
Indian English: out of town, away from one's usual city or workplace, typically for work or family reasons. Standard in corporate emails ("I will be out of station from Monday to Wednesday") and in formal phone messages. Originates from colonial-era military and railway parlance — a "station" was the cantonment or posting where a British officer was based, and being "out of station" meant temporarily absent from it. The phrase has long since lost its military edge and now simply means "away on a trip", but it remains specific to South Asian English; outsiders usually parse "out of station" as some sort of transport reference.
Apologies for the delayed reply, I was out of station last week attending my cousin's wedding in Jaipur.
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Other words near "out of station" (O)
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Related terms
Semantically related
- outstation71%
(India, Malaysia, Singapore) Out of town.
- outstation66%
A station or post in a remote position; an outpost.
- passed out61%
In Indian English: graduated from a university or training institution. "I passed out of IIT in 2018" means the speaker received their degree, not that they fainted in the building. The construction comes from the older British military and academy sense of "passing out" (completing the course of training and being commissioned), preserved in South Asian English long after it faded in modern British and American English. A constant source of confusion in international hiring conversations — British and American readers hear "lost consciousness" — and a classic example of Indian English keeping an older Commonwealth usage alive.
- out59%
Away from the inside or centre.
- go off the reservation58%
(literally, derogatory) To leave an Indian reservation to which one was restricted.