Word.ws English Dictionary

pushing off

pushing off is the present participle and gerund of push off.

Meaning of push off

Verb

push off (third-person singular simple present pushes off, present participle pushing off, simple past and past participle pushed off)

  1. (colloquial, imperative, intransitive, often) To go away; to get lost.
    • I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four years’ dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still another tempestuous term.1851, Herman Melville, Moby Dick, chapter 23
    Synonyms:
    go away
  2. (intransitive) To push an opponent back, a form of personal foul.
  3. (transitive) To delay, postpone, put off, push back.
    • Far from precipitating that event therefore he pushed it off until the very last moment, when, in fact, there was no alternative left him.1826, James Prior, Memoir of the Life and Character of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, Second Edition, Volume II, Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy (publisher), page 210

Questions about pushing off

What is pushing off the present participle and gerund of?
Pushing off is the present participle and gerund of push off.

Words near pushing off in the dictionary

  1. pushing down
  2. pushing forward
  3. pushing in
  4. pushing into the long grass
  5. pushing it
  6. pushing off
  7. pushing on
  8. pushing one's luck
  9. pushing one's way
  10. pushing one's way in
  11. pushing out

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pushing off (page history and authors); push 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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Cite this entry: “pushing off.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pushing_off. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.