Word.ws English Dictionary

bear off

bear off verb: to gain; to carry off, as a prize.

Verb

bear off (third-person singular simple present bears off, present participle bearing off, simple past bore off, past participle borne off)

  1. To gain; to carry off, as a prize.
  2. To restrain; to keep from approaching.
  3. To remove to a distance; to keep clear from rubbing against anything.
    • to bear off a blow; to bear off a boat
  4. To remove one of one's own checkers from the board.
    • The first player to bear off all checkers is the winner.
  5. (board games) To remove a piece from play.

Forms of bear off

third-person singular presentbears off
present participlebearing off
pastbore off
past participleborne off

Questions about bear off

What does bear off mean?
Bear off means to gain; to carry off, as a prize.
What part of speech is bear off?
Bear off is a verb.
What is the past tense of bear off?
The past tense of bear off is bore off.

Words near bear off in the dictionary

  1. bear leader
  2. bear leaders
  3. bear market
  4. bear markets
  5. bear meat
  6. bear off
  7. bear off from
  8. bear on
  9. bear oneself
  10. bear otter
  11. bear out

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bear off (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “bear off.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bear_off. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.