Word.ws English Dictionary

goes off the handle

goes off the handle is the third-person singular simple present indicative of go off the handle.

Meaning of go off the handle

Verb

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

  1. (colloquial) To die.
    • But the end came - the old fellow held on toughly; he never died until Lev's patience, hope and slender income were quite threadbare; so at last he went off the handle - Lev buried him and mourned the dispensation in true Kilkenny fashion.1856, Jonathan F. Kelley, “Nursing a Legacy”, in The Humors of Falconbridge, Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson, page 374

Questions about goes off the handle

What is goes off the handle the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Goes off the handle is the third-person singular simple present indicative of go off the handle.

Words near goes off the handle in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: goes off the handle (page history and authors); go off the handle (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:

Cite this entry: “goes off the handle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/goes_off_the_handle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.