be off

idiom

: to leave : to start going, running, etc.

I must be off if I want to make the next bus.

And the runners are off.

Examples of be off in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web When Suzie finally relents and dials, her husband Masa’s (Hidetoshi Nishijima) phone, which should be off, keeps ringing. —

Lili Loofbourow, Washington Post, 10 July 2024 The bottom line is that even with a second half $4 billion ($7.6 billion total), 2024’s grosses would still be off 16 percent from last year. —

Tom Brueggemann, IndieWire, 26 June 2024 But after privacy and security concerns emerged, Microsoft said Friday that the feature will be off by default. —

Britney Nguyen, Quartz, 7 June 2024 The statistical formula for a poll's margin of error — a number that pollsters (usually) release that tells us how much their poll could be off due to random sampling error alone — uses a square-root function, so our weighting does, too. —

G. Elliott Morris, ABC News, 25 Apr. 2024 See all Example Sentences for be off

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'be off.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.