offhand.
Without planning or thinking ahead.
Meaning & usage
Without planning or thinking ahead.
She gave an offhand speech.
Careless; without sufficient thought or consideration.
He doesn't realise how hurtful his offhand remarks can be.
Curt, abrupt, unfriendly.
She was quite offhand with me yesterday.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English *ofhande, *ofhende, from Old English ofhende (“absent, lost”), ultimately from Proto-Germanic *abahandijaz. Equivalent to (and re-formed as) off- + hand. Cognate with Icelandic afhendur. Compare onhand.
Right away, immediately, without thinking about it.
Offhand, I'd guess that that's a yellow-bellied sapsucker.
In an abrupt or unfriendly manner.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English *ofhande, *ofhende, from Old English ofhende (“absent, lost”), ultimately from Proto-Germanic *abahandijaz. Equivalent to (and re-formed as) off- + hand. Cognate with Icelandic afhendur. Compare onhand.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.