beg off
beg off verb: to obtain somebody's permission to skip or cancel an event that one has previously arranged with them.
Verb
beg off (third-person singular simple present begs off, present participle begging off, simple past and past participle begged off)
- To obtain somebody's permission to skip or cancel an event that one has previously arranged with them.
- I wonder if I can beg off going to the meeting that day, since it will take me an extra two hours out of my way.
- That's an issue that I have not discussed with the legal people. I don't know what authority we have to prevent insurance companies from setting criteria for those people that they would insure. Whether that rests with us or with the Commissioner of Insurance, I don't know. I'm going to have to beg...1985 December 7, Christine Guilfoy, Bailus Walker, “Quarantine Is No Way To Fight AIDS”, in Gay Community News, volume 13, number 21, page 8
- Synonyms:
- cry off
Synonyms of beg off
Forms of beg off
| third-person singular present | begs off |
|---|---|
| present participle | begging off |
| past participle | begged off |
| past | begged off |
Origin of beg off
beg + off
Questions about beg off
- What does beg off mean?
- Beg off means to obtain somebody's permission to skip or cancel an event that one has previously arranged with them.
- What part of speech is beg off?
- Beg off is a verb.
- What is the past tense of beg off?
- The past tense of beg off is begged off.
Words near beg off in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: beg 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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-beg off.ogg.
Cite this entry: “beg off.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/beg_off. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.