TOSS OFF • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Toss off

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/tɔs ɔf/ Listen

verb

Toss v. t. (past & past part. tossed, less properly tost; pres. part. tossing)

To throw with the hand; especially, to throw with the palm of the hand upward, or to throw upward; as, to toss a ball.

To lift or throw up with a sudden or violent motion; as, to toss the head. "He tossed his arm aloft, and proudly told me, He would not stay."

To cause to rise and fall; as, a ship tossed on the waves in a storm. "We being exceedingly tossed with a tempest."

To agitate; to make restless. "Calm region once, And full of peace, now tossed and turbulent."

Hence, to try; to harass. "Whom devils fly, thus is he tossed of men."

To keep in play; to tumble over; as, to spend four years in tossing the rules of grammar. (Obs.)

To toss off,

(a)

to drink hastily.

(b)

to accomplish easily or quickly.

(c)

to say in an offhand manner; as, to toss off a comment.

(d)

to masturbate; British slang.

To toss the cars.See under Oar, n.

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Etymology of 'Toss off'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Toss off" Quotes from Famous Books

... pastime, but he will find it far from a gloomy one. The sounds and sights of nature will revive and relieve him, and, if he is only successful, the weight of a few pounds of fish on his back will make him toss off that burden which poor Christian carried out of the City of Destruction. No man can be melancholy when the south wind blows in spring, when the soft, feathery March-browns flit from the alders and fall ...

— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... He had no intention of spoiling his last days by working. Every morning the Sixth went in for a three hours' paper, at nine-thirty. Before eleven Gordon had always shown up his papers, and strolled out of the room to read Paradise Lost in his study. In the afternoon he usually managed to toss off the two hours' exam. in three quarters of ...

— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh

... stretcher-bearers, and two chauffeurs and me. I don't know where I come in. But they've called me the Secretary and Reporter, which sounds very fine, and I am to keep the accounts (Heaven help them!) and write the Commandant's reports, and toss off articles for the daily papers, to make a little money for the Corps. We've got some already, raised by the Commandant's Report and Appeal that we published in the Daily Telegraph and Daily Chronicle. I shall never forget how I sprinted down ...

— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair

... expression in a young girl's face. You forget what a miserable surface-matter this language is in which we try to reproduce our interior state of being. Articulation is a shallow trick. From the light Poh! which we toss off from our lips as we fling a nameless scribbler's impertinences into our waste-baskets, to the gravest utterance which comes from our throats in our moments of deepest need, is only a space of some three or four inches. Words, which are a set of clickings, hissings, lispings, and so on, mean ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... opinion, your impression. I want to see how she will affect you. I don't say I ask for your advice; that, of course, you will not undertake to give. But I desire a definition, a characterization; you know you toss off those things. I don't see why I should n't tell you all this—I have always told you everything. I have never pretended to know anything about women, but I have always supposed that you knew everything. You certainly ...

— Confidence • Henry James