Word.ws English Dictionary

going off the handle

going off the handle is the present participle and gerund 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 going off the handle

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

Words near going off the handle in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: going 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.

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