Literary notes about Off (AI summary)
In these literary works, “off” frequently signals departure, separation, or removal. At times it emphasizes a swift exit, as when characters “went off to die” [1] or “were about to dart off again” [2]. It can mark a physical cutting away, such as in pleas to “cut off” heads [3], [4], or in describing being “cast off” from a wharf [5]. In other situations, “off” indicates discount or relief—as with “got ten per cent off” [6] or having a burden taken “off his conscience” [7]. Whether referring to stealing away (“carried off” [8]) or concluding an action (“broke off” [9]), these instances show the versatile function of “off” as a small word conveying significant change or separation.
- “Went off to die?”
— from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James - She was about to dart off again; but Edgar arrested her.
— from Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë - He expressed great penitence, and asked that his head might be cut off and exposed publicly to inform the Japanese nation of his crime.
— from A Diplomat in Japan by Ernest Mason Satow - Law, the, confirmed by miraculous signs, i. 407 , etc.; of Moses, must be spiritually understood, to cut off the murmurs of carnal interpreters, ii.
— from The City of God, Volume II by Bishop of Hippo Saint Augustine - A string of servants followed, loaded with his luggage; the Patna cast off and backed away from the wharf.
— from Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad - Say he got ten per cent off.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce - Rawdon was glad, deuced glad; the weight was off his conscience about poor Briggs's money.
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray - So thus, according to Mr. Taylor, we are to conclude that if the fairies carried off anything, it must have been the spirit or soul of Kirk.
— from The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. Evans-Wentz - I often wonder whether— [Breaking off.]
— from Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
