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 (UK) got off or (US) gotten off)

  1. (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!
  2. (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?
  3. (intransitive) To stop touching or physically interfering with something or someone.
    Don't tickle me – get off!
  4. (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!"
  5. (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.
  6. (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.
  7. (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."
  8. (possibly dated) To leave (somewhere) and start (a trip).
    • 1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019:
      "I think we should get off, Enid. It is nearly seven," said he.
    • 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.'
  9. (transitive, intransitive) To leave one's job, or leave school, as scheduled or with permission.
    If I can get off early tomorrow, I'll give you a ride home.
  10. (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.
  11. (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, ...
  12. (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.
    • 1886, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 216:
      "But I find you have been there after all," said the man, "and now you shall lose your life." The lad cried and begged for himself till he got off with his life; but he got a good thrashing.
    • 1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019:
      He was allowed to rise with a warning that if he played any tricks he would not get off so lightly the second time.
    • 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.
  13. (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.
  14. (transitive) To (write and) send (something); to discharge.
    She intended to get a letter off to her sister first thing that morning.
  15. (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.
  16. (transitive, UK) To make (someone) fall asleep.
    He couldn't get the infant off until nearly two in the morning.
  17. (intransitive, UK) To fall asleep.
    If I wake up during the night, I cannot get off again.
  18. (transitive, slang) To excite or arouse, especially in a sexual manner, as to cause to experience orgasm.
    • 1999, Adam Herz, American Pie (motion picture), spoken by Michelle (Alyson Hannigan):
      What? You don't think I know how to get myself off? Hell, that's what half of band camp is. Sex Ed.
    • 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.
  19. (intransitive, slang) To experience great pleasure, especially sexual pleasure; in particular, to experience an orgasm.
    It takes more than a picture in a girlie magazine for me to get off.
    • 1995, Nick Hornby, High Fidelity, London: Victor Gollancz, →ISBN, page 19:
      I knew, because both Alison and Penny had taught me, that busting up with someone could be miserable, but I didn't know that getting off with someone could be miserable too.
    • 1975, Mary Sanches, Ben G. Blount, Sociocultural Dimensions of Language Use, page 47:
      For example, one addict would crack shorts (break and enter cars) and usually obtain just enough stolen goods to buy stuff and get off just before getting sick.
    • 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:
  20. (intransitive, slang, UK) To kiss; to smooch.
    I'd like to get off with him after the party.
  21. (intransitive, slang) To get high (on a drug).
    • 1970, Milton Travers, Each Other's Victims, page 43:
      The beginner's dose may be anywhere from 100 to 250 mikes — micrograms, or millionths of a gram. Most hardened heads need 600 to 800 mikes, and some as many as 1,400 mikes, before they experience any sensation of getting off.
    • 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.
  22. (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!
  23. (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.
  24. (dated) To achieve (a goal); to successfully perform.

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