Definition of "out-herod" [out-her•od]

• To surpass (Herod) in violence or wickedness; to exceed in any vicious or offensive particular. Compare outpope the pope. (verb-transitive)

Gnu Collaboartive International Dictionary of English: licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

• "Simon-Pure Southerner from the very fact of their nativity, and visited with the most horrible retribution wherever they have shown a leaning toward the land of their birth, they find it necessary to out-herod"
• "(For Virgil and Nativity play and prophecy see authorities in Comparetti, "Virgil in Middles Ages", p. 310 sqq.) "To out-herod Herod", i.e. to over-act, dates from"
• "Every man’s invention seemed on the stretch, and each extravagant simile seemed to set one half of your men of wit into a brown study to produce something which should out-herod it.”"