throwing off

Verb

throw off (third-person singular simple present throws off, present participle throwing off, simple past threw off, past participle thrown off)

1. (idiomatic) To confuse; especially, to lose a pursuer.
   • I never saw her without glasses before, so it threw me off when she got contact lenses.
2. (idiomatic) To introduce errors or inaccuracies; to skew.
   • The dirt in the apparatus threw off the results.
3. (transitive) Of a horse, to eject its rider.
4. To fling away.
   • Long before the tidal wave had again grwon sufficiently high to throw off spray, the spray last thrown off would have passed beyond its reach.1882 March 11, Richard A. Proctor, “The Vistas of the Past: The Moon and the Earth”, in The Living Age, volume 152, page 813
5. To expel, reject, or renounce.
   • Silver is gotten thus, They take the Ore and dry it, then they burn it, and powder it very fine, they dilute it with Water, and throw off the light Powder that swims at Top, by decanting gently:1727, Edward Strother, Materia Medica, page 196
6. To split off.
   • And when what is called the black sap is descending the tree, the bark taken off is black, and loses its original color; and at this time also the bark begins to throw off a scurf , more especially young bark without much cork on it ; this outer skin having less of the proper sap or juice , and...1824, John Claudius Loudon, An Encyclopaedia of Gardening, page 968

See all 11 meanings of throw off