This paper explores a phenomenon of English in which out‐ combines with a predicate to form a complex predicate (e.g., outsing, outdo, outrun, outsmart, ...), here called “out‐PRED”. A thorough investigation uncovers several new generalizations, leading to analyses (i) that out‐PRED formation is productive and syntactic, building upon the structure for PRED, and (ii) that out‐ is the core of the out‐PRED clause’s extended verbal projection. These findings are derived via a derivation in which out‐ merges with PRED before any argument(s) can merge. This is then further supported by exploring domains in which out‐PRED is unavailable; though these seemingly unrelated, they share deep derivational properties that are incompatible with the derivation of out‐PRED. These findings have implications for the syntactic representation of argument structure more generally, supporting analyses where all arguments of a verb are syntactically severed from it.