What is a bailout? Where does the word come from?
Bailout has become closely associated with the idea of financial rescue - to bail out the Greece etc. But the word has many subtle usages - and two spellings! 1. bail/bale is to abandon abruptly as in making an emergency exit from an aeroplane in a parachute. 2. to bail out is to remove water from a leaky boat. 3. It is now more common to use bail in a figurative/metaphorical sense: The minister has bailed on the government's housing policy ( announced his opposition) . The pilot bailed out The actor bailed on the script (stopped reading his lines with any show of conviction) 4. 'Bail out' is also used metaphorically but usually with a closer connection to the literal meaning: The pilot bailed out of his plane. 5. The noun is sometimes spelled as one word: bailout. 6. Bail or bale - the spelling is disputed but bail is probably used more frequently. Both spellings are allowed by most dictionaries. A version of this pos