Word.ws English Dictionary

foist off

foist off verb: to fraudulently or disingenuously pass (goods, or ideas) on to.

Verb

foist off (third-person singular simple present foists off, present participle foisting off, simple past and past participle foisted off)

  1. (transitive) To fraudulently or disingenuously pass (goods, or ideas) on to.
    • She was talking big, but the Haruhi of last year would've forced people to attend an explanatory lecture about the brigade, printed huge numbers of flyers, and foisted them off on absolutely everybody.2013, Nagaru Tanigawa, The Dissociation of Haruhi Suzumiya
    • I used to think New Yorkers invented trends and foisted them off on a gullible nation but weren't themselves […]2018, Edmund White, The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading
  2. To get rid of (something unwanted) by giving it to someone else.
    • When Zeytuna didn't want to do her chores, she foisted them off on Lidya, who'd spent years being her caregiver and took over without a whisper of complaint.2014, Mary Ostyn, Forever Mom: What to Expect When You're Adopting, page 92
    • Countries with export surpluses foisted them off by bounties or placed them through unilateral agreements.2017, Broadus Mitchell, The Depression Decade, page 182

Forms of foist off

third-person singular presentfoists off
present participlefoisting off
past participlefoisted off
pastfoisted off

Questions about foist off

What does foist off mean?
Foist off means to fraudulently or disingenuously pass (goods, or ideas) on to.
What part of speech is foist off?
Foist off is a verb.
What is the past tense of foist off?
The past tense of foist off is foisted off.

Words near foist off in the dictionary

  1. Foism
  2. foison
  3. foisonless
  4. foisons
  5. foist
  6. foist off
  7. foisted
  8. foisted off
  9. foister
  10. foisters
  11. foisteth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: foist 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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