Word.ws English Dictionary

go off on one

go off on one verb: to launch into an animated diatribe, or passionate description or explanation of something.

Verb

go off on one (third-person singular simple present goes off on one, present participle going off on one, simple past went off on one, past participle gone off on one)

  1. (UK, colloquial) To launch into an animated diatribe, or passionate description or explanation of something.
    • I barely mentioned the band's name before he went off on one about how commercial the top forty is these days.
    • As far as I was concerned, we had a deal – she never went off on one about 'that's not a skirt it's a belt,' and I never went out dressed like a stripper.2021, Andreina Cordani, The Girl Who...

Forms of go off on one

third-person singular presentgoes off on one
present participlegoing off on one
pastwent off on one
past participlegone off on one

Questions about go off on one

What does go off on one mean?
Go off on one means to launch into an animated diatribe, or passionate description or explanation of something.
What part of speech is go off on one?
Go off on one is a verb.
What is the past tense of go off on one?
The past tense of go off on one is went off on one.

Words near go off on one in the dictionary

  1. go off at score
  2. go off half-cocked
  3. go off halfcocked
  4. go off into the weeds
  5. go off on a tangent
  6. go off on one
  7. go off the boil
  8. go off the handle
  9. go off the res
  10. go off the reservation
  11. go off the rez

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: go off on one (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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Cite this entry: “go off on one.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/go_off_on_one. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.