on the outside, looking in

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Prepositional phrase edit

on the outside, looking in

  1. (idiomatic) Excluded from a group, process, or opportunity, and feeling downhearted as a result.
    • 1964, “I’m On the Outside (Looking In)”, performed by Little Anthony and the Imperials:
      Won't you take me back again? I'll be waiting here till then / On the outside looking in
    • 1988 August 24, Mervyn Rothstein, “Kirk Douglas And Anger”, in New York Times[1], retrieved 2 August 2015:
      "In a sense, I've always felt on the outside, looking in," Mr. Douglas says. "It's my background, damn it. My father was an illiterate Russian immigrant, a ragman, the lowest rung on the economic scale. There were six sisters and my mother; I was the only boy. To be a young Jewish boy in a town—Amsterdam, in upstate New York—that was quite anti-Semitic."
    • 1997 May 18, Marianne Macdonald, “Who is Paul Theroux?”, in Independent (UK)[2], retrieved 2 August 2015:
      A recurrent theme of Theroux's books is this sense of being an alien, on the outside looking in.
    • 2007 August 2, Ishaan Tharoor, “India's Democratic Advantage”, in Time[3], retrieved 2 August 2015:
      While China's economy soars, hundreds of millions of migrant workers and rural peasants have been left on the outside looking in.

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