Word.ws English Dictionary

polish off

polish off verb: to finish completely, especially a food (polish the plate with one's tongue) or liquor.

Verb

polish off (third-person singular simple present polishes off, present participle polishing off, simple past and past participle polished off)

  1. (idiomatic) To finish completely, especially a food (polish the plate with one's tongue) or liquor.
    • They polished off the last of the cake.
    Synonyms:
    finish off
  2. To remove by polishing (rubbing with a fine abrasive).
    • White rice is rice that has had the brownish hull polished off leaving just the white inner part of the grain.

Synonyms of polish off

Forms of polish off

third-person singular presentpolishes off
present participlepolishing off
past participlepolished off
pastpolished off

Questions about polish off

What does polish off mean?
Polish off means to finish completely, especially a food (polish the plate with one's tongue) or liquor.
What part of speech is polish off?
Polish off is a verb.
What is the past tense of polish off?
The past tense of polish off is polished off.

Words near polish off in the dictionary

  1. Polish fire drills
  2. Polish Lowland Sheepdog
  3. Polish Messianism
  4. Polish millet
  5. Polish notation
  6. polish off
  7. polish one's rocket
  8. Polish Orthodox Church
  9. Polish overdrive
  10. Polish parliament
  11. Polish parliaments

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: polish 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.

Last updated:

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

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