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jacking off

jacking off

6 9.9
To touch your own private parts to feel good
  • idiom
  • /ˈdʒækɪŋ ɔf/
  • Offensive
translation icon : paja (vulgar)
  • It's about jacking off now, Kurt.
  • jacking off in the bathroom
  • jacking off now

Examples

Synonyms

masturbation
vsjacking off
  • Offensive
44 6.3

Touching your own or someone else's private parts to feel sexual pleasure

is an informal slang word focused mainly on male self-stimulation
jerking off
vsjacking off
  • Offensive
19 9.9

To touch your own penis to get sexual pleasure

is a slang term for male self-stimulation without the vulgar label
wank
vsjacking off
  • Offensive
5 9.9

An act of touching your own private parts to get sexual pleasure

is used broadly rather than mainly in British speech

Surface Forms

jacking off singular
jackings off plural

Morphology

jacking + off

The sexual meaning 'masturbating' is slang and idiomatic; it is not transparently derivable from the literal senses of 'jacking' (no clear literal sense here) and 'off' (away/completion). Because this is a colloquial/taboo expression whose meaning is language-specific and non-compositional, a B1 learner who only knows the constituents would be unlikely to infer the intended meaning.

Etymology

The slang jacking off likely comes from the word jack meaning 'to jerk' and the part off showing the action ends, so the phrase paints a clear image of quick, repeated hand movements and came to mean 'masturbating'.