What does "off-the-peg" mean?

Ready-made in a range of standard sizes (not tailor-made).

Off-the-peg

Q: What is a synonym for "off-the-peg"?

Common synonyms include: off-the-rack, off-the-rack, off-the-shelf, prêt-à-porter, ready-made, ready-to-wear.

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective

1
Ready-made in a range of standard sizes (not tailor-made). Ireland, UK, not-comparable
"Modern mothers seem not to have time to make dollies' wardrobes from scraps of this and that. As most of their own clothes are bought off the peg, not many scraps are available, and indeed many of them cannot sew."
2
Ready-made (of non-clothing items). figuratively, not-comparable

Adjective

1
(especially of clothing) made in standard sizes and available from merchandise in stock wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

off-the-rack off-the-rack off-the-shelf prêt-à-porter ready-made ready-to-wear

Antonyms

All antonyms

custom-made

Example

More examples

"Modern mothers seem not to have time to make dollies' wardrobes from scraps of this and that. As most of their own clothes are bought off the peg, not many scraps are available, and indeed many of them cannot sew."

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