well off
See also: well-off
English
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Adjective
[edit]well off (comparative better off or more well off, superlative best off or most well off)
- Of a person: in fortunate circumstances, especially having financial security, at any level from intermediate (comfortably off) to high (wealthy).
- Synonyms: well-heeled, comfortable
- Antonyms: badly off, ill off (dated); see also Thesaurus:impoverished
- Near-synonyms: well-endowed, wealthy; see also Thesaurus:wealthy
- He is very well off as a result of his stock portfolio containing some big winners over the years.
- 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter V, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
- Of all the queer collections of humans outside of a crazy asylum, it seemed to me this sanitarium was the cup winner. […] When you're well enough off so's you don't have to fret about anything but your heft or your diseases you begin to get queer, I suppose.
- 2011, Kate Gramich, chapter 3, in Kate Roberts, University of Wales Press, →ISBN, page 46:
- While Kate Roberts came from a poor background and, later in life, in the post-Second World War period suffered from severe money shortages, in the early 1930s, she and her husband must have counted themselves relatively well off, particularly in comparison with their neighbours in Tonypandy.
- (now dialectal or archaic) Of a person or thing: in a good position or circumstance.
- Synonym: doing well
- He would be well off if he would simply quit this place and never look back.
- 1876 February 19, “Grattan and Ninety-eight”, in The Shamrock[1], volume 13, page 333:
- When Lord Carhampton's strong measures came into operation, and the people found him act in so arbitrary a manner, there was not, in a fortnight after, almost one shopkeeper in Dublin who was not regularly sworn, and had not taken the oath of the United Irishmen. He was in fact their agent and recruiting sergeant [as it were]. His conduct to the Reverend Mr. Berwick will be best understood by detailing it as I had it from that individual. He was a clergyman of a parish not far from Luttrelstown, where Lord Carhampton resided; and in 1797, two soldiers came to his house, and took prisoner a man in his service, to bring to the General. Mr. Berwick accompanied them. Lord Carhampton knew him, both by name and profession; but he was so insolent and haughty—his manner and voice so arrogant, that Mr. Berwick thought he would be well off if he got safe out of the house. "Well, sir, who are you?—why do you protect this man! Don't you know that he is a rebel?" Berwick replied, he did not; that he had only just come from Longford, and before he went, had known the man to have been a very well-conducted person. "Sir, you must have known it? Where do you live?" "At Esker," Mr. Berwick replied. "Oh! no honest man would live there! Why do you harbour rogues and rebels in your place?" Mr. Berwick said, his profession and station, as chaplain to Lord Moira, should have sufficed, as he thought, to protect him from such an imputation. "Well, sir," replied Carhampton, "you may go!" Berwick now became a marked man; […] .
- 1966, Edward Willis Scripps, edited by Oliver Knight, I Protest: Selected Disquisitions of E. W. Scripps[2], University of Wisconsin Press, →ISBN, page 422:
- […] as to the advisability of marriage. On the whole, the young man is inclined to avoid the risks and dangers of conjugal life. However, he complains of the persistence and the uncontrollableness of his passions. He seems to think that he would be well off if he could be entirely free from them. He appeals to the physician for advice as to some method of freeing himself from his natural tendencies.
- 1977, Canadian Review of American Studies[3], volume 8, page 54:
- […] or five, each of which permits a player up to four different squares from which to choose. Least desirable are moves corresponding to the numbers one and two on the die which permit only up to two choices of squares. It should be clear that the greater the number of options open to a player the greater his strategic flexibility for advancing to or avoiding particular placements. If a player could influence the roll of the die he would be well off if he could restrict his rolls to four, five and six because these three numbers represent the full range of move types and are the most flexible strategically.
Translations
[edit]being in fortunate circumstances
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