10 Phrasal verbs with off - 15 real examples

Take clothes off

We put on, clothes, shoes, hats, gloves, jewelry etc. BUT We take these things off.

“In Japan, people don’t wear their shoes in the house. They always take them off at the entrance.”
“Hi welcome! Please take off your jacket and stay a while.”

See someone off – take them to the airport, bus/train station etc. and say goodbye before they leave

“Tomorrow I’ll drive my son to the airport and see him off. He visited us for 3 weeks but the time went by so fast!”

“My wife will visit her grandmother for a few weeks. I took her to the train station this morning to see her off.”

Take off – airplane = leave the ground

“His flight is scheduled to leave at 9:00 am but the planes rarely take off on time.”

“This your captain speaking. Please prepare for take off.”

That was a very smooth take-off. I didn’t even feel the plane leave the ground. — *Note – take-off (with a hyphen [-]) is a noun!

Take off – run away (Often past tense)

“I saw a mouse in my garage this morning. I tried to grab it but it took off before I got close.”

Take off running – to suddenly run
“There was a loud bang and then everyone took off running.”

Verbs of movement
run off – walk off – go off – ride off etc.

“Dinner is almost ready so don’t run off.” (Don’t go away because we will have dinner soon.)

“At the end of the movie, the cowboy rode off into the sunset.”

Be off – go somewhere

“It’s getting late, I’d better be off.” (I’d better go home.)

“Thanks for the coffee, I‘m off to work now.” (I will go to work now.)

Put (something) off – leave a task until a later time

“My father taught me to do my work right away. It’s a bad habit to put things off.”

“This 1000 word essay is due tomorrow and I haven’t even started. I shouldn’t have put it off until the last minute.”

I shouldn’t have put it off. It's gonna be a long night.

call off – cancel

“Jeff and Kerry have called off their engagement. Jeff will transfer to France for work and Kerry wants to stay close to her family in Vancouver.”

“A typhoon is coming. The coach has called off tomorrow’s practice.”