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Glite Dictionary
🙈 To masturbate 🕒 To waste time
to jack off

to jack off

3 9.9
To waste time doing unimportant or silly things instead of work
  • phrasal verb
  • /dʒæk ɔf/
  • Offensive
translation icon : perder el tiempo
  • So you're gonna go out there, drink your drink, say "Goodnight, I've had a very lovely evening," go home, and jack off.

Examples

  • She realized she was jacking off when she had deadlines approaching and still hadn't started.

  • I came in here to jack off the damn machine.

    Basic Instinct (1992)

  • Ain't you got nothing better to do than to jack off the damn machine?

    Basic Instinct (1992)

  • If you all didn't jack off so damn much, maybe you could stay in shape.

    The Last Picture Show (1971)

  • Instead of working on his project, he spent the whole afternoon just jacking off with his friends.

  • You won't finish anything if you keep jacking off instead of studying.

Synonyms

to wank around
vsto jack off
  • Offensive
1 9.9

To waste time instead of doing something useful

emphasizes deliberate wasting of time rather than casual unseriousness
to pull your pud
vsto jack off
  • Offensive
9.9

To waste time instead of working

is more vulgar in tone while meaning idle unproductive behaviour

Surface Forms

jack off infinitive
jacked off past
jacked off past participle
jacking off present participle
jacks off third person singular

Morphology

jack + off

The idiomatic, vulgar sense of 'jack off' (here glossed as 'waste time') does not follow a transparent composition from 'jack' (slang for nothing) + 'off' and is unpredictable for a learner who only knows the parts. This is slang/idiomatic usage (and often used with a different vulgar meaning), so a B1 learner would not reliably infer the MWE meaning from its constituents.

Etymology

Jack off is also used informally to mean 'to waste time'. This use came from the sexual meaning because someone who is jacking off is not doing useful work.