Word Type
Off can be a preposition, an adjective, a verb or an adverb.
off used as a preposition:
-
"I took it off the table.; Come off the roof!" - Out of the possession of.
"He didn't buy it off him. He stole it off him." - Away from or not on.
"He's off the computer, but he's still on the phone.; Keep off the grass." - Disconnected or subtracted from.
"We've been off the grid for three days now.; He took 20% off the list price." - Distant from.
"We're just off the main road.; The island is 23 miles off the cape." - No longer wanting or taking
"He's been off his feed since Tuesday.; He's off his meds again." - times
"Tantalum bar 6 off 3/8" Dia × 12" — Atom, Great Britain Atomic Energy Authority, 1972"
Prepositions are used to show the relationship between a noun or pronoun and another word. Examples of prepositions are: in, during, beside, after, for. In the sentence "Sows suffer in factory farms." The preposition "in" tells us the position of the sow relative to the factory farm. Learn more →
off used as an adjective:
- inoperative, disabled
"All the lights are off." - rotten
"This milk is off!" - in, or towards the half of the field away from the batsman's legs; the right side for a right-handed batsman
-
"sales are off this quarter"
Adjectives are are describing words. An adjective is a word that modifies a noun or pronoun (examples: small, scary, silly). Adjectives make the meaning of a noun more precise. Learn more →
off used as a verb:
- to kill
"He got in the way so I had him offed." - to switch off
"Can you off the light?" - to kill oneself, commit suicide
Verbs are action words and state of being words. Examples of action words are: ran, attacking, dreamed. Examples of "state of being" words are: is, was, be. Learn more →
off used as an adverb:
- In a direction away from the speaker or object.
"He drove off in a cloud of smoke." - Into a state of non-operation; into a state of non-existence.
"Please switch off the light when you leave."
An adverb is a word that modifies an adjective (very red), verb (quietly running), or another adverb (very carefully). Learn more →
Related Searches
What type of word is off?
- Preposition usage: I took it off the table.; Come off the roof!
- Preposition usage: He didn't buy it off him. He stole it off him.
- Preposition usage: He's off the computer, but he's still on the phone.; Keep off the grass.
- Preposition usage: We've been off the grid for three days now.; He took 20% off the list price.
- Preposition usage: We're just off the main road.; The island is 23 miles off the cape.
- Preposition usage: He's been off his feed since Tuesday.; He's off his meds again.
- Preposition usage: Tantalum bar 6 off 3/8" Dia × 12" — Atom, Great Britain Atomic Energy Authority, 1972
- Preposition usage: samples submitted … 12 off Thermistors type 1K3A531 … — BSI test report for shock and vibration testing, 2000
- Adjective usage: All the lights are off.
- Adjective usage: This milk is off!
- Adjective usage: sales are off this quarter
- Verb usage: He got in the way so I had him offed.
- Verb usage: Can you off the light?
- Adverb usage: He drove off in a cloud of smoke.
- Adverb usage: The book fell off the table.
- Adverb usage: Please switch off the light when you leave.
- Adverb usage: die off
Unfortunately, with the current database that runs this site, I don't have data about which senses of off are used most commonly. I've got ideas about how to fix this but will need to find a source of "sense" frequencies. Hopefully there's enough info above to help you understand the part of speech of off, and guess at its most common usage.
Word Type
For those interested in a little info about this site: it's a side project that I developed while working on Describing Words and Related Words. Both of those projects are based around words, but have much grander goals. I had an idea for a website that simply explains the word types of the words that you search for - just like a dictionary, but focussed on the part of speech of the words. And since I already had a lot of the infrastructure in place from the other two sites, I figured it wouldn't be too much more work to get this up and running.
The dictionary is based on the amazing Wiktionary project by wikimedia. I initially started with WordNet, but then realised that it was missing many types of words/lemma (determiners, pronouns, abbreviations, and many more). This caused me to investigate the 1913 edition of Websters Dictionary - which is now in the public domain. However, after a day's work wrangling it into a database I realised that there were far too many errors (especially with the part-of-speech tagging) for it to be viable for Word Type.
Finally, I went back to Wiktionary - which I already knew about, but had been avoiding because it's not properly structured for parsing. That's when I stumbled across the UBY project - an amazing project which needs more recognition. The researchers have parsed the whole of Wiktionary and other sources, and compiled everything into a single unified resource. I simply extracted the Wiktionary entries and threw them into this interface! So it took a little more work than expected, but I'm happy I kept at it after the first couple of blunders.
Special thanks to the contributors of the open-source code that was used in this project: the UBY project (mentioned above), @mongodb and express.js.
Currently, this is based on a version of wiktionary which is a few years old. I plan to update it to a newer version soon and that update should bring in a bunch of new word senses for many words (or more accurately, lemma).
