off
/ɒf/
"off" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“off” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #124) as an adverb. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #124
- frequency rank, English
- 1,431
- “O” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - In a direction away from the speaker or other reference point.
Corpus desk
Index EN-off · off · English
off · rank #124 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-CORE #124
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,431
- PHOTO-FINISH before
Nearest frequency peer: before (-1 rank slots)
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Frequency neighbours of confusable “off”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- too
too
99,880 corpus weight
- going
going
99,879 corpus weight
- before
before
99,878 corpus weight
- off
off
99,877 corpus weight
- why
why
99,876 corpus weight
- made
made
99,875 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “off” against nearest ranked English headwords, not a reprint of the confusable-pair desk.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | off |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adverb |
| IPA | /ɒf/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #124 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “off”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for off is neighbouring look-alikes ("on", "or", …), not just typos; it is anadverb pronounced /ɒf/. Frequency #124 among 1,431 “O” headwords. 5 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for off, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "on", "or", "OH", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂epó Proto-Germanic *ab Proto-West Germanic *ab Old English æf Old English of Middle English of English off From Middle English of, from Old English of, af, æf (“from, off, away”), from Proto-West Germanic *ab, from Prot… The correct English form is off, spelled O-F-F.
Definition
- 1In a direction away from the speaker or other reference point.
- 2Into a state of non-operation or non-existence.
- 3So as to remove or separate, or be removed or separated.
- 4Offstage.
- 5Used in various other ways specific to individual idiomatic phrases, e.g. bring off, show off, put off, tell off, etc. See the entry for the individual phrase.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how off appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
He drove off in a cloud of smoke.
No matter how early I came down, I would find him on the veranda, smoking cigarettes, or[…]. And at last I began to realize in my harassed soul that all elusion was futile, and to take such holidays as I could get, when he was off with a girl, in a spirit of thankfulness.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂epó Proto-Germanic *ab Proto-West Germanic *ab Old English æf Old English of Middle English of English off From Middle English of, from Old English of, af, æf (“from, off, away”), from Proto-West Germanic *ab, from Proto-Germanic *ab (“from”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂epo (“from, off, back”). Doublet of of. Cognates Cognate with Scots aff (“away, off”), Saterland Frisian oawe, ou (“from”), West Frisian ôf (“away, off”), Dutch af (“from, off”), German ab (“from, off”), German Low German, Luxembourgish of (“off”), Yiddish אָפּ (op, “off”), Danish, Icelandic af (“from, off”), Faroese, Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk av (“off”), Swedish af, av (“off”), Gothic 𐌰𐍆 (af, “of, from”); and with Latin ab (“of, from, by”), Ancient Greek ἀπό (apó, “from”), and others.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "off", not the corpus desk frequency band.