Outlying describes something located far away from a center or main area. An outlying island sits distant from the mainland. Outlying neighborhoods spread beyond a city's busy downtown core. When meteorologists track a hurricane, they watch its outlying rain bands sweeping across regions hundreds of miles from the storm's center.

The word suggests both physical distance and a sense of being on the edges or periphery. A school might serve students from outlying areas who travel longer distances than those living nearby. A researcher studying outlying data points examines measurements that fall far from the cluster of typical results, which might signal an error or an interesting exception.

Think of it this way: if your town is the center, outlying describes what's scattered around the outer edges, like farms, small villages, or remote cabins. The word captures that sense of being genuinely far out, at a substantial distance from the center.