What's the difference between "stall" and "stall out"? [closed]

Can a car engine stall out?

It seems to me that a plane can stall out, but a car can only stall.

Of the first ten written instances of stalled out in Google Books, only two involve planes, but most of the rest involve trucks, cars, outboard motors, etc.

So the answer is - Yes, a car engine can stall out, as can lots of things besides planes. OP may be thinking that only planes fall out of the sky when they stall, but I don't think that makes any difference here.

EDIT: Having never heard "stalled out" before, I checked written instances of 'motor stalled {out}', confirming my suspicion that the "out" version is comparitively 'below the radar'. But it is used.

Yes an engine can stall out, so can the vehicle that contains it.

In English, out is often used as an adverbial intensifier to stress the action represented by the verb. This is certainly the case here. Out here serves no semantic purpose other than intensifying the scope of the stalling.

You can also say: my car stalled completely. Here completely is meaningless, because a car either stalls, or doesn't stall. It can't stall partially. It's not a point along a scale.