to eat off
6
4.9
- phrasal verb
:
comer de
- With a church that made his title proper in the mouths of his flock and in the mouths of white men on Sunday, with a stall that made money, a wife who earned money, and a house kept so clean that you could eat off the floor, Preacher could have felt that his son would do well if he did no worse.
- clean enough to eat off
- eat off the floor
- eat off my plate
Examples
-
Old ladies kept their concrete porches so clean that one could eat off them.
Blog text (27) -
But I would not have felt uncomfortable eating off of the floor like that's how clean it was.
-
There are two sides to a plate; still, you only eat off of one.
Fiction book (1995) -
Floor mopped? - You could eat off of it.
-
Just sun shining on sky-blue metal so clean you could eat off it.
Fiction book (1990) -
I ate off Limoges dishes.
Fiction book (1999) -
He'd never eaten off such good dishes, either, or had wine with a meal. Dr. had to wonder about which fork to use while he sat at a table so long it could have easily fed twenty.
Fiction book (1999) -
Busy, indefatigable nanoscrubbers incorporated into the very structural materials keep our floor and seating so hygienic you could even eat off them.
Fiction book (1999) -
Wipe down the upholstery now; when it comes to upholstery, it doesn't need to be spic and span; you don't need to eat off it.
Fiction book (1994) -
The kitchen was so spotless that you could eat off the counter without worrying about germs.
Antonyms
How Clean
Surface Forms
Morphology
The literal parts 'eat' + 'off' suggest eating directly from a surface, which gives a clear pragmatic inference that the surface is very clean; this provides learners with a plausible route to the intended meaning. However, the cleanliness interpretation is an implicature/metaphorical use rather than a straightforward compositional meaning, so a B1 learner may not reliably predict this use without prior exposure.
Etymology
Eat off gives a simple picture: imagine a table so clean you could put food on it and eat it right off the surface. So when people say you could 'eat off' something, they mean it is 'very clean'.