Word.ws English Dictionary

bounce off

bounce off verb: to test (ideas) on someone.

Verb

bounce off (third-person singular simple present bounces off, present participle bouncing off, simple past and past participle bounced off)

  1. (idiomatic, informal, transitive) To test (ideas) on someone.
    • I have a plan to bounce off you.
    • Let me bounce an idea off you.
  2. (transitive) To use as a springboard for further discussion.
    • My comments about the resolutions come after Pat and Gayle have explained their objections and talked about what they think their effects will be. My remark is bouncing off of what they said, feeding it back to them in an attempt to continue the flow off the interview.1981 August 29, Nancy Wechsler, “Pornography and the Lawyers Guild”, in Gay Community News, volume 9, number 7, page 4
  3. (intransitive) To move away with a bouncing movement.
    • She bounced off out of the room.
  4. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see bounce, off.

Forms of bounce off

third-person singular presentbounces off
present participlebouncing off
past participlebounced off
pastbounced off

Words formed from bounce off

Questions about bounce off

What does bounce off mean?
Bounce off means to test (ideas) on someone.
What part of speech is bounce off?
Bounce off is a verb.
What is the past tense of bounce off?
The past tense of bounce off is bounced off.

Words near bounce off in the dictionary

  1. bounce backs
  2. bounce house
  3. bounce houses
  4. bounce in
  5. bounce into
  6. bounce off
  7. bounce off the walls
  8. bounce on it
  9. bounce rate
  10. bounce rates
  11. bounce rubble

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bounce 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-bounce off.ogg.

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