to round off
- phrasal verb
- /raʊnd ɔf/
- And finally, using the fillet tool to round off the sharp corners!
Examples
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Hogging out the majority of the wood was a nice first step, but I have to carve and shape round off all of these tines.
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He carefully rounded off the corners of the paper to avoid any cuts.
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When eating this titan parsley, there's no doubt that it's flat-leaf, but it's as if the sharp edge has been rounded off.
Blog text (16) -
I used a sandpaper to round off the sharp edges of the wooden table.
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To make the sculpture safe to touch, she decided to round off all the jagged parts.
Synonyms
Make something have a curved shape
To bend into a smooth, rounded shape
To join parts so their surfaces form a smooth line
Make something smooth by removing sharp edges
Antonyms
How Smooth
Surface Forms
Morphology
The verb 'round' (make more rounded) maps metaphorically onto making a number 'round' (without decimals), and the particle 'off' conveys a sense of completion or reduction, so a learner who knows the constituents can plausibly infer a numeric 'making round' action. However, the precise numeric operation (nearest whole number or to a zero) and the conventional use in mathematics is a metaphorical extension and not fully predictable without exposure, so it is only partially transparent.
Etymology
Round off comes from carpenters and sculptors who smooth sharp corners with sandpaper or a plane until the edge becomes round and the rough part is taken off. That's why it means 'to make a smooth edge'.