Word.ws English Dictionary

going off the boil

going off the boil is the present participle and gerund of go off the boil.

Meaning of go off the boil

Verb

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

  1. (Australia, UK) To cease to boil when heat is no longer applied.
    • All puddings must be boiled in plenty of water, turned frequently, kept closely covered, and never allowed to go off the boil.1891, Nelson A. Dunning, editor, The Farmers' Alliance History and Agricultural Digest
  2. (Australia, UK, idiomatic) To lose interest; to pall.
    • As one of the rearguard put it, "We laid up until the Hun had gone off the boil a bit and slipped out the following night."1955, John Baker White, The Big Lie
  3. (Australia, UK, idiomatic) To diminish in intensity or urgency.
  4. (Australia, UK, idiomatic) To become less successful.

Questions about going off the boil

What is going off the boil the present participle and gerund of?
Going off the boil is the present participle and gerund of go off the boil.

Words near going off the boil in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: going off the boil (page history and authors); go off the boil (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: “going off the boil.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/going_off_the_boil. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.