to lead off
1
8.2
- phrasal verb
- /liːd ɔf/
- Archaic
:
corromper
- He was led off by his friends to engage in risky behavior that worried his parents.
Examples
-
She led her younger brother off the right path.
-
Some peers can easily lead off younger students into making poor choices.
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It is wrong to lead off innocent children by exposing them to harmful habits.
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She worried that bad company might lead off her son into a life of crime.
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The older boys tried to lead off their younger siblings by encouraging them to skip school.
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Don't lead him off into bad habits!
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It's easy for older teens to lead off their younger siblings into trouble without realizing the consequences.
Synonyms
20
5.5
To make someone go the wrong way, behave badly, or believe things that are not true
The act of causing someone to do wrong things by a bad influence
How Corrupting
- NSFW
9
7.9
125
4.5
- Archaic
1
8.2
146
3.3
81
3.6
806
2.3
Surface Forms
Morphology
lead + off
The core idea — causing someone to go 'away' from good behavior — can be inferred from 'lead' (to cause or guide) plus the particle 'off' (away), so a learner who knows the constituents could plausibly guess meaning in a context like 'lead him off into bad habits.' However, the specific sense of moral corruption is metaphorical and relies on phrasal-verb conventions (cf. 'lead astray'), so the exact pragmatic nuance is not fully predictable without prior exposure.
Etymology
Lead off may come from the idea of someone guiding another away from the right path, where the leader leads someone off the road into bad places. That's why it can mean 'to cause someone to behave badly' or 'to corrupt'.