Word.ws English Dictionary

went off the handle

went off the handle is the simple past of go off the handle.

Meaning of go off the handle

Verb

go off the handle (third-person singular simple present goes off the handle, present participle going off the handle, simple past went off the handle, past participle gone off the handle)

  1. (colloquial) To die.
    • But the end came - the old fellow held on toughly; he never died until Lev's patience, hope and slender income were quite threadbare; so at last he went off the handle - Lev buried him and mourned the dispensation in true Kilkenny fashion.1856, Jonathan F. Kelley, “Nursing a Legacy”, in The Humors of Falconbridge, Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson, page 374

Questions about went off the handle

What is went off the handle the simple past of?
Went off the handle is the simple past of go off the handle.

Words near went off the handle in the dictionary

  1. went off half-cocked
  2. went off into the weeds
  3. went off on a tangent
  4. went off on one
  5. went off the boil
  6. went off the handle
  7. went off the res
  8. went off the reservation
  9. went off the rez
  10. went on
  11. went on by

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: went off the handle (page history and authors); go off the handle (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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