"Wir gehen hinaus" vs "Wir gehen aus"

Question

What are the difference between these 2 expressions.

Wir gehen aus

Wir gehen hinaus

I know that they are very interchangeable, but I would like to know what are the subtle differences with each other.

Answer 1

They are not interchangeable.

Wir gehen aus
We date someone, we go clubbing, wo go to a pub, ...

but

Wir gehen hinaus
We leave a building

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In the first example the verb is

ausgehen

which is a separable verb. So »aus« is not an adverb, but part of the word »ausgehen«.

But in the second example you use the verb »gehen« together with the adverb »hinaus«.

Answer 2

Usually, the two verbs are not interchangeable; as you can verify in your dictionary, both words have multiple distinct meanings. However, there is, as far as I can see, one overlap in the sense "exit/leave (a room/house etc.)", which is why I'm writing a separate response. Compare the following examples:

(1) Sie ging aus, um ein Kleid zu kaufen. / (2) Der Kranke darf täglich nur eine Stunde ausgehen. / (3) Sie ging aus, [um] die Welt zu erkunden.

(4) Sie ging aus dem Zimmer hinaus, um die Suppe zu holen. / (5) Kannst du bitte hinausgehen? Ich muss noch etwas Privates mit meinem Mann besprechen. / (6) Lass uns in den Garten hinausgehen!

Here, ausgehen means to leave an apartment/a house/your home for a particular purpose. It is not possible to specificy the origin or the destination with a prepositional complement (*Sie ging aus der Wohnung aus ... *Sie ging in den Garten aus ....). The purpose of the departure, on the other hand, is frequently specified (1, 3). In (2), where the sick may leave [the hospital] only for an hour per day, it is implied. I would consider this use somewhat formal. In particular, I would be rather surprised to hear somebody use ausgehen in this sense in oral communication.

_{[Note that ausgehen in the - very frequent - sense "to go out to party, have fun" is related to (probably: derives from) this meaning: Lass uns heute Abend [zusammen] ausgehen! I'm ignoring this meaning for purposes of this response. It is listed separately in dictionaries, behaves in its own distinct way, and doesn't really correspond to any of the meanings of hinausgehen, as Hubert Schölnast's response clarifies.]}

hinausgehen means to go outside or to exit (a room/apartment/...). In den Garten hinausgehen means to leave the building and enter the garden. If you are standing in a room with your husband and ask a third person the question in (5), you are asking them to leave this room (but not necessarily to leave the apartment/house). Unlike ausgehen, hinausgehen focuses on a physical movement from one place ("in") to another place ("out"). It is rare that the origin and the destination are left unspecified, but very frequent that the purpose of the action is unspecified. (2), for instance, does not require additional context to make sense. If hinausgehen were used, one would naturally expect a specification of the place he is allowed to leave for an hour (his room? the hospital building?).

I would say that hinausgehen could still work at least in (1) and (2) (with the above caveat); it is definitely the more flexible of the two. ausgehen cannot be used in (4-6), if only for the formal restrictions outlined above.

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Sources:

• Duden, Großes Wörterbuch der dt. Sprache, 4th ed. (meaning 1(a): "(zu einem bestimmten Zweck, mit einer bestimmten Absicht) die Wohnung verlassen, aus dem Haus gehen: sie war ausgegangen, um einen Besuch, um Einkäufe zu machen")
• DWDS, "ausgehen" (meaning 1(a): "das Haus, die Wohnung für eine gewisse Zeit verlassen")
• IDS, Grammis, Wörterbuch zur Verbvalenz, entry "ausgehen (Lesart 3)"