to write off
23
4.8
- phrasal verb
- /raɪt ɔf/
:
dar por perdido
- As professionals, teachers should look inward to solve classroom problems before writing off students as hopeless.
They let me write off Eric as a complete loss.
- They let me write off Eric as a complete loss.
- But it was Cesar who everybody had written off.
- Yeah, pretty difficult, but like eradicating and writing off an entire genre of all country music.
- So I think the one thing that I like you can't completely write off your entire first year as it being a waste.
- So to be perfectly honest, I'd be rather people have that conversation and maybe write off my success based on that.
- And I and I would say, excuse me, I would say that the I don't ever write off conspiracy theories.
- As you look at all of those other businesses, which I often write off because I say, well, show me when they ship.
- So to be called all these names and to be basically just written off by Twitter and the random media and the random everyone.
- And sadly, trauma bonding often means that the gentleness and deliberateness of being cherished is often written off as dull or unexciting.
- And then all of a sudden, because we all wrote off the prequels, we're all like, well, it's still perfect because George came back and he's a little old.
Examples
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But it is way too early to write off Sae Jin Kwon.
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In so doing, they have written off millions of poor people, declaring them to be "not creditworthy."
Academic text (1998) -
Unless she is content to write off significant segments.
Academic text (2010) -
So to be perfectly honest, I'd be rather people have that conversation and maybe write off my success based on that.
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I find myself quick to write off the dementia patient, not even attempting because I am busy.
Academic text (2011) -
I mean, you have done an amazing job of revitalizing a show that many people had just completely written off.
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In any case, we agree to write off those people as Missing in Action... ...and they agree to call off the war and give us a lot of other people back.
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There's a real temptation to just write off the GOP and be done with it.
Blog text (8) -
Humanists shouldn't write off the Tea Party movement as an unorganized collection of cranks and malcontents.
Academic text (2010) -
Many investors tend to write off struggling businesses before they even have a chance to succeed.
Synonyms
2
5.9
Treat something as unimportant and ignore it
Antonyms
How Final
Surface Forms
Morphology
write + off
The sense 'to regard as a loss or not worth further consideration' is related to the literal senses of 'write' and the particle 'off' but relies on a phrasal-verb idiomatic extension (originally accounting: to remove from accounts). The connection is partially transparent — a learner might guess a removal/ending sense from 'off' but would not reliably infer the specific evaluative/financial meaning without prior exposure, so it is semi-transparent.
Etymology
Write off in the sense of accepting a loss comes from the same paper habit: if people 'wrote something off' on their books, they treated it as gone and stopped working on it. That's why it now means 'to accept that something cannot be recovered' or 'to stop considering someone or something'.