get off
English
Pronunciation
Audio (AU): (file)
Verb
get off (third-person singular simple present gets off, present participle getting off, simple past got off, past participle got off or gotten off)
- (transitive, intransitive) To move from being on top of (something) to not being on top of it.
- Get off your chair and help me.
- Get off! You're crushing me!
- (transitive) To move (something) from being on top of (something else) to not being on top of it.
- Get your butt off your chair and help me.
- Could you please get the book off the top shelf for me?
- (intransitive) To stop touching or interfering with something or someone.
- Don't tickle me – get off!
- (transitive) To cause (something) to stop touching or interfering with (something else).
- 1991, Lydia Lee, Thank Your Lucky Stars, Silhouette (→ISBN):
- "And I'm going! Period." Puckering her lips, she made an ear-splitting whistle, clapped her hands and shouted, "Pluto! Max treat!" [...] Max felt something tug on his pant leg. It was Pluto. "Jane! Get your dog off me!"
- 1991, Lydia Lee, Thank Your Lucky Stars, Silhouette (→ISBN):
- (transitive) To stop using a piece of equipment, such as a telephone or computer.
- Can you get off the phone, please? I need to use it urgently.
- (transitive, intransitive) To disembark, especially from mass transportation such as a bus or train; to depart from (a path, highway, etc).
- You get off the train at the third stop.
- Let's get off the interstate at exit 70. No, let's get off at the very next exit.
- When we reach the next stop, we'll get off.
- The heavens opened just as I got off the bus.
- (transitive) To make or help someone be ready to leave a place (especially to go to another place).
- 2010, Peter Lovenheim, In the Neighborhood: The Search for Community on an American Street, One Sleepover at a Time, Penguin (→ISBN)
- "I get up and get the kids off. I do everything normal mothers do. I just do it in less time."
- 2010, Peter Lovenheim, In the Neighborhood: The Search for Community on an American Street, One Sleepover at a Time, Penguin (→ISBN)
- (possibly dated) To leave (somewhere) and start (a trip).
- 2016, D. G. Compton, The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe, New York Review of Books (→ISBN), page 155:
- “I've been out for a walk around. The rain's blown over. We'll be able to get off right after breakfast.”
- 2017, Jane Gardam, Faith Fox, Europa Editions (→ISBN):
- 'I'm beginning to feel like London again. I wish we could get off right after breakfast.'
- 2016, D. G. Compton, The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe, New York Review of Books (→ISBN), page 155:
- (transitive, intransitive) To leave one's job as scheduled or with permission.
- If I can get off early tomorrow, I'll give you a ride home.
- (transitive) To reserve or have a period of time as a vacation from work.
- She managed to get a week off in March to go to Paris.
- (transitive) To acquire (something) from (someone).
- 2001, Jonathan Harvey, Out In The Open, Bloomsbury Methuen Drama (→ISBN):
- Well I'll have to get a form off Rosemary Boyle to get money out your bank.
- 2017, Barbara Robey Egloff Shackett, Stranded in Montana; Dumped in Arizona, Dorrance Publishing (→ISBN), page 202:
- They said if they sent a form to me it would take about ten days, but if I could get a form off the Internet, I would greatly speed up the process.
- 2019, Christopher Beanland, The Wall in the Head, Unbound Publishing (→ISBN):
- I'll get her to come and get a script off you in, say, a fortnight? And then I want you on all the shoots with me and Kate and that gothic tosspot who's presenting. You never know when it might need a rewrite, or he might need a kick up the arse, ...
- 2001, Jonathan Harvey, Out In The Open, Bloomsbury Methuen Drama (→ISBN):
- (intransitive) To escape serious or severe consequences; to receive only mild or no punishment (or injuries, etc) for something one has done or been accused of.
- The vandal got off easy, with only a fine.
- You got off lightly by not being kept in detention for breaking that window.
- 1962, Henry Lawson, Prose Works:
- Then he was charged with killing some sheep and a steer on the run, and converting them to his own use, but got off mainly because there was a difference of opinion between the squatter and the other local J.P. concerning politics ...
- 2000, Morris Philipson, A Man in Charge: A Novel, University of Chicago Press (→ISBN), page 174:
- My parents were killed, but I got off with only a broken arm and a broken leg.
- (transitive) To help someone to escape serious or severe consequences and receive only mild or no punishment.
- She could've faced jail time, but her talented lawyer got her off with only a fine.
- (transitive) To (write and) send (something); to discharge.
- She intended to get a letter off to her sister first thing that morning.
- (transitive, dated) To utter.
- to get off a joke
- 1942-1963, J. F. Powers, quoted in 2013, Katherine A. Powers, Suitable Accommodations: An Autobiographical Story of Family Life: The Letters of J. F. Powers, 1942-1963, Macmillan (→ISBN), page 155:
- I heard Nelson Algren on the Chez Show, a radio program emanating from the Sapphire Bar of the Chez Paree—you see I've sunk to the lower depths—and he got off a line about Hollywood being a con man's paradise, which wasn't a very ...
- 1991, Newsweek:
- When Quayle looked silly by saying he would be a "pit bull" in the 1992 campaign, David Letterman got off a line about it ("For Halloween, he's going to be a Ninja Turtle"), but the general reaction was curiously tame.
- (transitive, UK) To make (someone) fall asleep.
- He couldn't get the infant off until nearly two in the morning.
- (intransitive, UK) To fall asleep.
- If I wake up during the night, I cannot get off again.
- (transitive, slang) To excite or arouse, especially in a sexual manner, as to cause to experience orgasm.
- 2011, Kirsten Kaschock, Sleight: A Novel, Coffee House Press (→ISBN):
- It was Need. Her Need took her half in sleep onto her pillow and with her own hand got her off.
- 2015, Cara McKenna, Crosstown Crush: A Sins In the City Novel, Penguin (→ISBN):
- Her husband's tongue was fast and ingenious, mastered at teasing her clit with rapid, fluttering flicks, and he knew how much pressure she liked from years of getting her off.
- 2011, Kirsten Kaschock, Sleight: A Novel, Coffee House Press (→ISBN):
- (intransitive, slang) To experience great pleasure, especially sexual pleasure; in particular, to experience an orgasm.
- You are not allowed to get off in my bedroom.
- It takes more than a picture in a girlie magazine for me to get off.
- 2009, Rob Lacey, word on the street, eBook, Zondervan (→ISBN):
- Out of spite, Pharaoh cuts straw supplies and Jewish labourers have to make bricks without straw, the same target rates of productivity as before, but with no straw – virtually impossible. Pharaoh gets off on their exhaustion:
- (intransitive, slang, UK) To kiss; to smooch.
- I'd like to get off with him after the party.
- To get high (on a drug).
- 1985, Joanne Baum, One step over the line: a no-nonsense guide to recognizing and treating cocaine dependency, Harpercollins (→ISBN):
- Each person has a more outrageous story than the previous teller. [...] "The first time I got off on cocaine, man, it was just too fine."
- 1989, Cardwell C. Nuckols, Cocaine: From Dependency to Recovery (→ISBN), page 2:
- Fear is biochemically similar to someone "getting off" on cocaine.
- 1985, Joanne Baum, One step over the line: a no-nonsense guide to recognizing and treating cocaine dependency, Harpercollins (→ISBN):
- (transitive, especially in an interrogative sentence) To find enjoyment (in behaving in a presumptuous, rude, or intrusive manner).
- Where do you get off talking to me like that?
- 1981, Magnus J. Krynski and Robert A. Maguire, “A Million Laughs, A Bright Hope”, translating Wisława Szymborska, “Sto Pociech” in Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems by Wisława Szymborska:
- in a word: he’s almost nobody,
but his head’s filled with freedom, omniscience, transcendence
beyond his foolish flesh,
just where does he get off!
- (intransitive) Indicates annoyance or dismissiveness.
- 2001, Ken Follett, Jackdaws, Dutton, →ISBN, page 140:
- "And you're the only person in the country who can do it."
- "Get off," she said skeptically.
- 2001, Ken Follett, Jackdaws, Dutton, →ISBN, page 140:
Synonyms
- (move from being on top of): get down (from)
- (stop touching someone): stop, desist, refrain, leave alone, let alone
- (disembark): alight, disembark from, leave, detrain (from a train), debus (from a bus), deplane (from an aircraft)
- (fall asleep): drop off
- (experience sexual pleasure): cop off
Antonyms
Derived terms
Translations
to move from being on top of (something)
|
to move (something) from being on (something else)
|
to stop touching or interfering with something or someone
to disembark from
|
to incur only mild consequences
to fall asleep
|
to excite, arouse
Categories:
- English terms with audio links
- English lemmas
- English verbs
- English phrasal verbs
- English phrasal verbs formed with "off"
- English multiword terms
- English transitive verbs
- English intransitive verbs
- English terms with usage examples
- English dated terms
- British English
- English slang
- English terms with quotations
- English phrasal verbs with particle (off)