get off lightly
get off lightly verb: to end up with a mild punishment, or without serious harm.
Verb
get off lightly (third-person singular simple present gets off lightly, present participle getting off lightly, simple past got off lightly, past participle (UK) got off lightly or (US) gotten off lightly)
- To end up with a mild punishment, or without serious harm.
- My cousin got off lightly with a restraining order after he broke the boy’s leg.
- @Socrates
Got off lightly, all things considered. They just want me to drink this hemlock stuff. BRB.
8.11am, March 22, 399 BC2012, Kelvin MacKenzie, Chas Newkey-Burden, The Twitter History of the World, London: John Blake, →ISBN, page 12
Forms of get off lightly
| third-person singular present | gets off lightly |
|---|---|
| present participle | getting off lightly |
| past | got off lightly |
| past participle UK | got off lightly |
| past participle US | gotten off lightly |
Questions about get off lightly
- What does get off lightly mean?
- Get off lightly means to end up with a mild punishment, or without serious harm.
- What part of speech is get off lightly?
- Get off lightly is a verb.
- What is the past tense of get off lightly?
- The past tense of get off lightly is got off lightly.
Words near get off lightly in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: get off lightly (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-get off lightly.ogg.
Cite this entry: “get off lightly.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/get_off_lightly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.