Off-the-cuff

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Extemporaneous; without prior preparation; spontaneous; impromptu. idiomatic, not-comparable

    "He made a few off-the-cuff remarks before launching into his prepared speech."

Adjective
  1. 1
    with little or no preparation or forethought wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
ad libad-libcasualextemporalextemporaneousextemporaneous

Example

More examples

"He made a splendid off-the-cuff speech."

Etymology

From the prepositional phrase off the cuff.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.