phrasal verb🧩 phrasal verb

take off

to remove clothing

What it means

To remove clothing, shoes, or accessories from your body. It also has unrelated meanings: when a plane leaves the ground, or when something suddenly becomes very successful.

Examples

  • Please take off your shoes before entering the house.
  • She took off her jacket as soon as she came inside.
  • The plane took off twenty minutes late due to bad weather.
  • His business really took off after the article was published.

Where it comes from

Separable: 'take off your hat' or 'take your hat off', and pronouns go in the middle ('take it off'). It's the direct opposite of 'put on' for clothing. The aviation sense dates from the early 1900s, when planes literally took themselves off the ground.

Related phrasal verbs

#put on#try on#take out#kick off

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