Offing
noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 The area of the sea in which a ship can be seen in the distance from land, excluding the parts nearest the shore, and beyond the anchoring ground.
"to see (a ship) in the offing"
- 2 the part of the sea that can be seen from the shore and is beyond the anchoring area wordnet
- 3 The distance that a ship at sea keeps away from land, often because of navigational dangers, fog and other hazards; a position at a distance from shore.
"[…] till I ſaw the Land tun out a great Length into the Sea, at about the Diſtance of four or five Leagues before me, and the Sea being very calm I kept a large, offing to make this Point; […]"
- 4 the near or foreseeable future wordnet
- 5 The foreseeable future. Chiefly in the phrase in the offing. figuratively
- 1 present participle and gerund of off form-of, gerund, participle, present
Example
More examples"Tom was excited about the new job offer since he'd felt stagnant and unappreciated in his current position, but when he told his boss that he was thinking about leaving, his boss told him that a promotion and a pay raise were in the offing if he would stay, so it left Tom in a quandary about what to do."
Etymology
From off + -ing. Attested since before 1600. Early texts also spell the term offin and offen.
Related phrases
More for "offing"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.