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Use offhand in a sentence

Definition of offhand:

  • (adjective) with little or no preparation or forethought;
  • (adjective) casually thoughtless or inconsiderate; "an offhand manner"; "she treated most men with offhand contempt"
  • (adverb) without previous thought or preparation; "couldn't give the figures offhand";
  • (adverb) in a casually inconsiderate manner;

Sentence Examples:

"Why, the boys would be so furious they'd be tempted to lynch him offhand."

Beside it, on the outer side of it, runs a path, which becomes an offhand gangway of planking at the overhanging places.

This was left to be settled, very much offhand, by a detached iceberg, which sank the ship in which Mary was emigrating.

Instead of making such an assumption offhand, the scientific method requires us to ask if there is not some other way of accounting for the facts more in accordance with the selfish disposition and habits of savages.

Now and then Luck pushed it back impatiently with the flat of his palm, but he showed no other sign of being conscious of anything at all save the picture; though he could have told you offhand just how many times Bill turned his eyes upon him.

It is no new thing for a crew to come ashore and clear out the booths of the tradesmen without troubling to pay offhand.

Beginning slowly, carelessly, in a deceptive, offhand manner, he lets the toy revolve as it will.

There is no offhand solution for the case of the incorrigible boy or girl.

She had married him offhand, in a whirl of the senses.

"No," Hank confessed feebly, "I guess I couldn't just figure all that out, not offhand like."

I recalled, offhand, sundry conspicuous examples of this sort.

He took the detestable hand and returned an offhand greeting.

He was not going to bare his soul offhand to gratify any woman's curiosity.

Tommy Ashe observed offhand that the heat was beastly, but not a patch to blizzards and frost.

Can you manage to ride on Transcontinental trains without being recognized offhand?

You, as I have just now intimated, probably cannot show it to me offhand, but by the methods which you have the means of using you certainly ought to be able to throw a vast deal of light on the subject.

"I can't tell that offhand," sullenly.

His letters have a jolly, bullying, but offhand and jerky tone, and they are very short.

Shooting offhand required nerve, and steadiness of nerve, to "put it there, and hold it."

In taking aim in the offhand shots the gun's barrel was brought upward, so the target was always in full view, and as the bead was drawn the body was tilted backward until an easy balance for the long barrel was found.

The offhand fashion of address provoked a fresh demonstration which the nominee acknowledged with a good-humored nod.

No one, in school or out, should attempt to memorize these words offhand.

There is, of course, no infallible touchstone by which we can tell offhand.

He still strove for an offhand gaiety that he did not feel.

Back of that gruff, offhand talk and behind them bushy, gray eyebrows there's a lot of fun and good nature.

"Your lordship has pricked the garter offhand," the merry man answered cheerfully.

I doubt if the greatest poet that ever lived scribbled lines like that, offhand.

Honest, if I'd been a yellow pup tied in the corner, she couldn't have been more offhand.

West bowed his sleek, yellow head and muttered a formal blessing with an offhand manner, as if it were a mere ceremony.

Somehow, though, I couldn't seem to hit on anything that I was willing to wish on to the youngster offhand.

With offhand cordiality, Claude takes charge of this interesting friend.

Now there are so many things that may happen to a gasoline engine that it would be difficult to name them all offhand, and Tom, who had not had very much experience, was at a loss to find what had stopped his machinery.

"Oh, that's Jim's way, you know," put in Tucker with his offhand kindliness.

Logan looked offhand and elaborately casual, but he fairly glowed with triumph.

"I shouldn't want to say that it did, right offhand like this," he drawled.

It were well if none remained boys all their lives; but what is more common than the sight of grown men, talking on political or moral or religious subjects, in that offhand, idle way, which we signify by the word unreal?

This is not satisfactory, if, as no one can deny, its teaching be so offhand, so ambitious, so changeable.

And how I resented the offhand manner in which the captain had extended his deplorable invitation!

Indeed, it was hard to tell offhand, although he had the keen head of a collie.

This offhand and lordly, to hide the patent diminution of his trade.

Tom rather drew into himself at this insolent and offhand definition.

Your next world is your next world, and not to be squandered offhand.

It was the offhand, unimportant manner it had been done that irritated him.

New firms come into existence, of course, and have to be fully investigated, but the experienced manager of a foreign department can tell almost offhand whether he wants a bill of any given name or not.

When the Texan referred in his offhand manner to himself and friends as bringing forward the animals to be passed to these two representatives, the Comanche replied that no one but Gleeson himself must act in the transaction.

She liked Bob's breezy offhand way which was not at all like Bert's gentle, kindly manner.

This offhand way of fixing the rise and fall of a movement has just enough truth about it to cause misconception.

You're only a boy, and offhand I'd say that this French damsel belonged in the latter class.

Lambert had offhand, perhaps unintentionally, shown him that afternoon how wide the intervening space still stretched.

This time she'd decided to pay an offhand tribute to autumn and American cuisine.

"Offhand I'd say that's pretty implausible."

Therefore, it was the offhand shot that the Indian boy sought to master.

In any other European colony they would have been hanged offhand, as the villainous murderers that they were.

It's unfortunate that she fell in with one hasty suitor who was anxious to marry her offhand immediately on her arrival.

She was amazed to find that, offhand, she could not do this.

Sidney felt like making an indignant reply, he felt like fighting; then he did some quick thinking, and decided to be patient, answering the questions in an offhand way, and so be on his way, for he felt sleepy.

I can't turn Irreconcilable in that offhand manner.

Strangely, however, many writers assume offhand that anybody can capitalize words correctly and uniformly.

Frequently he could give offhand a long series of statistics, and was resorted to as an encyclopedia.

The markedly individual artist who cares nothing for popular favor and is more anxious to satisfy his own conscience than to gather round him possible clients is never likely to become a favorite offhand.

Probably sending Clancy out offhand in this fashion had been a test of Clancy's adaptability for the business.

She seemed to be feverish and ill at ease, and tried to cover the symptoms by a reversion to her old offhand manner.

And having no knowledge of him, except from report, you form an opinion upon hearsay, and condemn him offhand.

She evidently decided offhand that not only had mortification set in but that it had reached an advanced stage.

We do not mean that these typical folk would really believe in its existence as a special monster, but they would be quite prepared to say in an offhand way that the whale was intended under this name.

They do not take disillusionment in our offhand, familiar way.

It is to our crusading kings, Richard and Edward I, and to their followers that he owes a popularity that extends to numbers that do not reverence saints and would be hard put to it to name offhand half a dozen others.

For all her preliminary refusal and offhand acceptance, Marjorie had kept tryst.

You do not expect me, I presume, to send for a parson and marry you offhand?

And it was undeniable that Dick's pretense of sympathy had been rather more offhand than such pretenses usually are.

If these comparisons were of an offhand and haphazard sort, nothing was thereby lost in effectiveness.

We marry in the most offhand, reckless fashion just to gratify our emotions.

It is an offhand generalization from a few cases out of thousands, and therefore misleading.

I asked, being vexed at their offhand way of settling things so far beyond them.

He began, in an offhand way, stretching his shoulders as if the long wait on the stairs had stiffened his joints.

He spoke with offhand fatherhood.

They were more offhand and less deferential than were her own people, but were full of kindliness.

The margin was covered with annotations, written in that stiff, formal, priest-like hand, rather large, which appeals so strongly to the imagination, but says nothing to the hasty and offhand man of the world.

When he has finished writing the name of the card, he, in an offhand way, places the pencil on the table, so that the point would indicate four in an imaginary clock, he of course sitting opposite to six.

This seems more important, at any rate as a preliminary investigation, than attempting offhand to assign particular reasons why in such and such a century this or that sound was changed in some particular way.

It may be already foreseen, and indeed with pleasure, that such problems are not to be solved offhand, and will probably require for their final settlement an international congress, at which the final decisions will be made.

Quite naturally I hesitated, as who would not at accepting offhand a thing worth a couple of thousand rupees.

Lawyers are prone to dispose of such instances with the offhand remark, "Well, they might not have been guilty of that particular act, but no doubt they had committed crimes for which they escaped punishment."

The furtive watchfulness of that look was wholly at variance with the offhand tone in which he answered Burton.

My grandfather often enjoins my father not to let his letters be seen, as he writes offhand without consideration.

Fuller strolled aimlessly up to the ticket office and laid one elbow on the window in an offhand, companionable fashion.

His voice was cheery, his manner offhand and friendly.

To name the exact amount offhand might aggravate the old maniac's already suspicious frame of mind.

It would never have done to act offhand, at random; the plan had to be carried out skillfully, by degrees.

The gross and clumsy male intellect, which works in accordance with the stupid laws of inductive logic, has a queer habit of requiring something or other, in the way of definite evidence, before it commits itself offhand to the distinct conclusion.

It must have been there that she had picked up this rather offhand, or more correctly speaking, this playful manner, whose manifestations sometimes surprised her grandmother, though they rarely shocked her.

He had never played about with me at all, so I took a somersault when he began to mention you in an offhand way.

How foolish he had been to avoid this boyish, fraternal, offhand young fellow.

He waited till they were again lying feet to feet by the wall, and the air through the open window was cool enough to allow of their being comfortable, before he felt able to take an offhand, man-to-man tone.

It seems he got into a huff when he first came because they treated him in offhand fashion, as they treat everybody.

To invent, or provide, offhand, or on the spur of the moment; as, he improvised a hammer out of a stone.

He merely needed to be offhand and nonchalant.

Kinship with his Majesty the Sun of the tropics is not to be claimed offhand.

His offhand speech was full of compassion and brotherly love.

A clap board with a mark the size of a dollar was put up; they began to fire offhand, and the bystanders were surprised.