Word.ws English Dictionary

bought off

bought off is the simple past and past participle of buy off.

Meaning of buy off

Verb

buy off (third-person singular simple present buys off, present participle buying off, simple past and past participle bought off)

  1. (transitive) To pay off, convince to refrain etc. by corrupt payment or other service.
    • Then, Sir, as to Bribery and Corruption at Elections ... every Elector has a natural Byass to vote for one Man rather than another, and every Elector will vote according to his natural Byass, if he is not bought off: whoever endeavours to buy him off, must certainly come up to his Price, and this...1742, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, The history and proceedings of the House of Commons from the Restoration to the present time, Volume 8, page 166
  2. (transitive) To gain release for (a person) from military service by payment of money.
    Synonyms:
    buy out

Questions about bought off

What is bought off the simple past and past participle of?
Bought off is the simple past and past participle of buy off.

Words near bought off in the dictionary

  1. bought back
  2. bought down
  3. bought in
  4. bought into
  5. bought it
  6. bought off
  7. bought off on
  8. bought out
  9. bought out from under
  10. bought over
  11. bought priesthood

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bought off (page history and authors); buy 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:

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