Word.ws English Dictionary

gone off the handle

gone off the handle is the past participle 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 gone off the handle

What is gone off the handle the past participle of?
Gone off the handle is the past participle of go off the handle.

Words near gone off the handle in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gone 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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