Word.ws English Dictionary

fight off

fight off verb: to succeed in defeating a challenge, or an attack.

Verb

fight off (third-person singular simple present fights off, present participle fighting off, simple past and past participle fought off)

  1. To succeed in defeating a challenge, or an attack.
    • The platoon fought off the guerrilla attack.
    • The actor John Smith hopes to fight off the other nominees for the Golden Globe award.
  2. To resist, particularly an infection or an emotion.
    • I'm fighting off the 'flu at the moment.
  3. (Caribbean, slang) To fight (someone) aggressively.

Forms of fight off

third-person singular presentfights off
present participlefighting off
past participlefought off
pastfought off

Questions about fight off

What does fight off mean?
Fight off means to succeed in defeating a challenge, or an attack.
What part of speech is fight off?
Fight off is a verb.
What is the past tense of fight off?
The past tense of fight off is fought off.

Words near fight off in the dictionary

  1. fight like a married couple
  2. fight like an old married couple
  3. fight like cat and dog
  4. fight like cats and dogs
  5. fight me
  6. fight off
  7. fight one's corner
  8. fight one's guts out
  9. fight or flight
  10. fight out
  11. fight shy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fight 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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-fight off.wav.

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