Word.ws English Dictionary

jerk off

jerk off verb: to masturbate by manually stimulating one's own penis. Also the alternative form of jerkoff.

Verb

jerk off (third-person singular simple present jerks off, present participle jerking off, simple past and past participle jerked off)

  1. (Australia, Canada, US, idiomatic, intransitive, vulgar) To masturbate by manually stimulating one's own penis.
    • My partner and I jerk off together sometimes.
    • But to learn to love manhood, sooner or later you have to learn to jerk off in one particular way, to the exclusion of some other possible ways.1999, John Stoltenberg, The End of Manhood: Parables on Sex and Selfhood, page 245
  2. (Australia, Canada, US, idiomatic, transitive, vulgar) To manually stimulate someone else's penis; to give a hand job.
    • She jerked me off with both hands and it felt so good I almost started crying.
    • Once in cofessional ^([sic]) I told a priest I had jerked off another boy. Man, you'd have thought I'd killed him. What a lecture I got about hell and damnation! I was hoping to get some guidance and understanding. That was the end of confessions for years.1983 December 31, James L. Zipper, “Happy To Be Me”, in Gay Community News, volume 11, number 24, page 7
  3. (Australia, Canada, US, idiomatic, intransitive, vulgar) To do nothing; to waste time.
    • Stop jerking off. We've got a deadline.
  4. (Australia, Canada, US, idiomatic, transitive, vulgar) To deceive.
    • He was jerking us all off about how advanced the project was.
  5. (Australia, Canada, US, dated, idiomatic) Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see jerk, off.
    • I climb up in my trees myself, and jerk off the suckers in the trees.1884, Ohio State Horticultural Society, Seventeenth Annual Report of the Ohio State Horticultural Society for the Year 1883-84, page 32
    • The conductor and the head brakeman testified that they gave no order to Roy Wilson or any one else to jerk off or pull off young Mitchell from the train.1896, California Superior Courts, Colorado Supreme Court, Kansas Supreme Court, et al., The Pacific Reporter, page 265

Noun

jerk off (countable and uncountable, plural jerk offs)

  1. (Australia, Canada, US, idiomatic, vulgar) An act of masturbation.
  2. (Australia, Canada, US, idiomatic) A stunt in which the performer is suddenly pulled off a horse, etc. by means of a cable.
    • He became one of the industry's top horsemen, specializing in Running Ws, pit falls, and cable jerk-offs.2014, Gene Scott Freese, Hollywood Stunt Performers, 1910s-1970s

Also used as

jerk off is also the alternative form of jerkoff.

jerk off meaning in Tagalog, Thai and Vietnamese

jerk off in Tagalog

to masturbate
jakol

jerk off in Thai

to masturbate
ชักว่าว chák-wâao

jerk off in Vietnamese

to masturbate
quay tay

Synonyms of jerk off

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of jerk off

Forms of jerk off

Verb
third-person singular presentjerks off
present participlejerking off
past participlejerked off
pastjerked off
alternative abbreviationJ-O
alternative abbreviationJ/O
Noun
pluraljerk offs

Words formed from jerk off

Questions about jerk off

What does jerk off mean?
Jerk off means to masturbate by manually stimulating one's own penis.
What is jerk off in Tagalog?
Jerk off in Tagalog is jakol. See Jerk off meaning in Tagalog.
What part of speech is jerk off?
Jerk off can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of jerk off?
The past tense of jerk off is jerked off.

Words near jerk off in the dictionary

  1. jerk
  2. jerk around
  3. jerk ass
  4. jerk asses
  5. jerk it
  6. jerk off
  7. jerk offs
  8. jerk one off
  9. jerk one out
  10. jerk over
  11. jerk someone's chain

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: jerk off (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-jerk off.ogg.

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