shove off

shove off verb: to set a boat in motion by pushing with an oar or boathook.

Verb

shove off (third-person singular simple present shoves off, present participle shoving off, simple past and past participle shoved off)

To set a boat in motion by pushing with an oar or boathook.
- And so my boys and I stood on the bank of the Snake River in the spring of ’98, feeling that ancient urge to shove off.[…]But we had a brand-new canoe and the paddles were in hand and, sure, I have never floated the Snake in a canoe, not any other river for that matter, but what the heck.2021 [2001], John Eldredge, chapter 1, in Wild at Heart, Expanded edition, Nelson Books, →ISBN, page 4
(imperative, informal, often) To leave or scram.
- Well, it looks like it's time to go. Let's shove off.
- Well– Now, don't think you can get around me like that. He's not coming out, and that's my final word. Now, shove off!1979, Monty Python's Life of Brian, spoken by Mandy Cohen (Terry Jones)

go away, get out (of my sight), get going: പൊയ്ക്കൊള്ളുക, പുറപ്പെടുക, ഓടുക, പോവുക, അകന്നുപോവുക, മാറിപ്പോകുക

third-person singular present	shoves off
present participle	shoving off
past participle	shoved off
past	shoved off

From shove + off.

What does shove off mean?: Shove off means to set a boat in motion by pushing with an oar or boathook.
What is shove off in Malayalam?: Shove off in Malayalam is പൊയ്ക്കൊള്ളുക, പുറപ്പെടുക, ഓടുക. See Shove off meaning in Malayalam.
What part of speech is shove off?: Shove off is a verb.
What is the past tense of shove off?: The past tense of shove off is shoved off.

Adapted from Wiktionary: shove off (page history and authors); shove off (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “shove off.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shove_off. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.