Word.ws English Dictionary

offings

offings is the plural of offing.

Meaning of offing

Noun

offing (plural offings)

  1. The area of the sea in which a ship can be seen in the distance from land, excluding the parts nearest the shore, and beyond the anchoring ground.
    • to see (a ship) in the offing
  2. The distance that a ship at sea keeps away from land, often because of navigational dangers, fog and other hazards; a position at a distance from shore.
    • […] till I ſaw the Land tun out a great Length into the Sea, at about the Diſtance of four or five Leagues before me, and the Sea being very calm I kept a large, offing to make this Point; […]1719 May 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, […], London: […] W[illiam] Taylor […], →OCLC, page 35
  3. (figuratively) The foreseeable future. Chiefly in the phrase in the offing.

Questions about offings

What is offings the plural of?
Offings is the plural of offing.

Words near offings in the dictionary

  1. offie
  2. Offield
  3. Offields
  4. offies
  5. offing
  6. offings
  7. Offington
  8. offish
  9. offishly
  10. offishness
  11. offkey

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: offings (page history and authors); offing (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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