come off

Verb

come off (third-person singular simple present comes off, present participle coming off, simple past came off, past participle come off)

1. To become detached.
   • One of the wagon wheels came off.
2. To have some success; to succeed.
   • He tried his Chaplin impression, but it didn't really come off.
   • […] the kind of second-drawer poems which do not quite come off in terms of total response but which poets are often reluctant to abandon because they are technically competent and a good deal of work has gone into them.1978, Canadian Literature, numbers 78-79, page 84
3. (dated, intransitive) To have an orgasm.
   • She turned and looked at him. ‘We came off together that time,’ he said. […] ‘Don't people often come off together?’ she asked with naive curiosity.1928, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Gutenberg edition, [Florence, Italy]: [ […] Tipografia Giuntina, […]], →OCLC; republished as Lady Chatterley’s Lover (eBook no....
4. To appear; to seem; to project a certain quality.
   • I'm sorry if I came off as condescending; that wasn't my intention.
   • You should be careful about how you come off during interviews.

   Synonyms:

   come across

5. To escape or get off (lightly, etc.); to come out of a situation without significant harm.
   • It strikes me that you have come off uncommonly easy, seeing as how things were. No mess, no breakages, no odds and ends from every room that you can't remember until it's too late to claim. Just one big lot taken clean.1927, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], Max Carrados Mysteries
   • Well that is precisely what I did, and as I had never heard of using gloves and veil in connection with bees I suppose I came off lightly with one sting on the tip of the nose.1952, British Bee Journal & Bee-keepers Adviser, volume 80, page 466
6. To occur; to take place; to turn out; to end up.
   • It came off as we expected.
   • The concluding ceremony came off at twelve o’clock on the day of departure […]1870 April–September, Charles Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1870, →OCLC
7. (obsolete?) To come away (from a place); to leave.
   • The 290 bus route comes off the A316 at Hanworth.
   • […] Arnton Fell comes into sight across the Riccarton Burn and—more important—so does the Carlisle train, with an impatient-looking Pacific, Sir Visto, and several heads out of windows inquiring what the delay is and marvelling at the spectacle of an eight-coach train, garlanded at the front and...1956 December, Michael Robbins, “End of the Border Counties Line”, in Railway Magazine, page 810
8. (obsolete) To finish being printed.
   • This one came off easily.
9. (transitive) To quit (a drug or habit); to stop doing (something).
10. (intransitive) To stop playing (music).
    • I had to say, ‘Come off after the second beat, don’t hang on!’ (as per Mahler’s instructions).2018 October, October 2018 rehearsal and practice wiki archive (blog), archived from the original on 12 Aug 2024