To point out is to draw everybody's attention to a detail they had missed. Sometimes with a finger, more often with a sentence.
It splits round an object, so you point something out. The physical sense is simply indicating, as in pointing out a landmark. The commoner sense is conversational and often mildly awkward, since pointing out a mistake means telling somebody about it, and the phrase is chosen precisely because it sounds less confrontational than correcting them. May I just point out is one of the most passive-aggressive openings in British English.
1phrasepoint outTo draw attention to something.
“He was kind enough to point out the error.”
From point and out. Instead of pointing to a particular thing, the term implies pointing to one particular thing out of several similar things, or to a thing in a scene where it might not be readily seen.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Phrasal Verbs, A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 12 of A Man Called Ove.
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