Word.ws English Dictionary

tear-off

tear-off noun: a strip or sheet of paper, plastic film, etc., that is designed to be removed by tearing or pulling off.

tear-off: a strip or sheet of paper, plastic film, etc., that is designed to be removed by tearing or pulling...
Image: Michael Mandiberg, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

tear-off (plural tear-offs)

  1. A strip or sheet of paper, plastic film, etc., that is designed to be removed by tearing or pulling off.
    • My visor was covered in mud, and I had used up all the tear-offs.
  2. A pull-down menu that can be detached from its parent menu bar and dragged around the screen.
    • Tear-offs are rarely found in modern interfaces, though, so typically you'll want to disable the tear-off feature by default.2009, John K. Ousterhout, Ken Jones, Tcl and the Tk Toolkit
  3. A COM (Component Object Model) interface that is instantiated only when explicitly requested.
    • This makes tearoffs especially risky for objects that may be accessed remotely. Given all of the potential pitfalls of tearoffs, a logical question might be, "when are tearoffs appropriate?" There is no absolute answer; […]1998, Don Box, Essential COM, page 183
  4. The demolition phase of a reroofing job, wherein the old shingles or other materials are torn off in preparation for the installation of new ones.
    • Holonyms: reroofing, roofing

Adjective

tear-off (not comparable)

  1. Designed to be removed by tearing or pulling off.
    • a tear-off strip, a tear-off protector

tear-off meaning in Tamil

tear-off in Tamil

பிய்த்தெடு, கிழித்தெடு, வரைகலைப் பயனாளர் இடை முகத்தில்

Forms of tear-off

pluraltear-offs
alternative formtearoff

Origin of tear-off

Deverbal from tear off.

Questions about tear-off

What does tear-off mean?
Tear-off means a strip or sheet of paper, plastic film, etc., that is designed to be removed by tearing or pulling off.
What is tear-off in Tamil?
Tear-off in Tamil is பிய்த்தெடு, கிழித்தெடு, வரைகலைப் பயனாளர் இடை முகத்தில். See Tear-off meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is tear-off?
Tear-off can be a noun or an adjective.
What is the plural of tear-off?
The plural of tear-off is tear-offs.

Words near tear-off in the dictionary

  1. tear-jerker
  2. tear-jerkers
  3. tear-jerking
  4. tear-mouth
  5. tear-mouths
  6. tear-off
  7. tear-offs
  8. tear-pit
  9. tear-stained
  10. tear-throat
  11. tear-throats

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tear-off (page history and authors); tear-off (Tamil Wiktionary) (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: “tear-off.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tear-off. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.