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📦 To unload goods 📝 To give tasks 💾 To move data
to offload

to offload

5 4.2
To give a task or responsibility to someone else to reduce your work
  • verb
  • /ˈɔfˌloʊd/
translation icon : delegar
  • Local governments have long used tax lien sales to offload the burden of collecting unpaid taxes and recoup cash from homeowners who missed payments.
  • offload the task
  • incentive to offload
  • want to offload

You have fully internalized the shame that they offloaded onto you a long time ago.

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Examples

  • At that rate, it'll take a month or more to offload those shares.

    Blog text (33)

  • I say we offload some of that gold now.

    Fiction book (2002)

  • So he is willing to offload it for cash.

    The Goldfinch (2019)

  • - As soon as I offload the bonds to Ray, we're gone.

    Thieves (2018)

  • And in that situation, you offload all the cognitive labor to the group based process.

  • And what that place does is it offloads the burden for families around here.

    Mulligan Brothers Interviews

  • Though its star has fallen, the SynthWorld Project is still an excellent place for traders to offload raw materials.

    Blog text (28)

  • Meanwhile, maybe the public schools could offload enough troublemakers to regain control of the students.

    Blog text (21)

  • The security buyer gets regular payments from all those mortgages; the banker offloads the risk.

    Blog text (25)

  • To reduce my workload, I decided to offload some of my tasks to my colleague.

Synonyms

to leave
vsto offload
∞ 1.7

To let another person take care of something or someone

shifts responsibility away to lower one's own workload
to transfer
vsto offload
528 2.7

To move a person or thing to another place

moves tasks to other people to reduce personal workload
to hand off
vsto offload
  • US
22 3.7

Give responsibility, control, or an object to another person

moves tasks to others specifically to reduce one's own workload

Antonyms

to retain
236 3.4

To keep having something such as a job or possession

to assume
  • Specialized
36 3.7

Agree to pay someone else's debts or costs

How Responsible

to take on
405 2.8
to delegate
45 3.7
to pass on
134 2.7
to offload
5 4.2
to dump
541 2.6

Surface Forms

offload infinitive
offloaded past
offloaded past participle
offloading present participle
offloads third person singular

Morphology

offload = load (transparent) = off + load

The sense 'transfer a burden/task to someone else' is a common, readily inferable metaphorical extension of 'off' + 'load' familiar to general learners.

Etymology

Offload comes from the parts off ('away') and load ('a weight or goods'), which gives a clear image: moving a 'load' of work or worry away from yourself onto someone else. So to offload a task is to pass the burden to another person.