jerking off
- noun
- Offensive
- Many young men experiment with jerking off during their teenage years.
- stop jerking off
- guys jerking off
- jerking off several times
Using the bathroom, jerking off, playing video games, asleep.
- Using the bathroom, jerking off, playing video games, asleep.
- Just this close to jerking off in my ball in your own pool.
- No, it's like, then that would mean jerking off as gay.
Examples
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Having his entire family know what they were going through was nearly as humiliating as jerking off into a jar.
Fiction book (2002) -
One night, I woke up around 2 AM to him watching porn and jerking off.
Blog text (11) -
- I better start jerking off first.
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When was the last time you jerked off?
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Um, I would love a copy of the tape, you know, for, like, jerking off later, whatever.
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I'm jerking off right now.
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I give you permission to picture her while you're jerking off.
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Dan said the struggle is when you pee after jerking off, it burns a little.
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Is that what you do on Saturdays when you're done jerking off?
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"No longer plagued by the fear of sterility, I felt that jerking off was one more routine, not much more erotic than eating or sleeping.
Fiction book (2001)
Synonyms
Touching your own or someone else's private parts to feel sexual pleasure
To touch your own private parts to feel good
An act of touching your own private parts to get sexual pleasure
A slang word for a man touching his penis to get sexual pleasure
Surface Forms
Morphology
The verb 'jerk' (a quick spasmodic movement) combined with 'off' gives a partial clue to a repetitive or completed manual action, so there is a visible metaphorical link to the physical motion involved in masturbation. However, the specific sexual meaning is slangy and culturally coded rather than directly predictable from the constituents, so a B1 learner who knows the words but has not encountered the phrase is unlikely to infer the full meaning reliably.
Etymology
The phrase jerking off comes from the simple image of a quick, repeated hand movement used to get sexual release. The word jerk means a sudden move and off gives a sense of finishing, so the phrase now means 'to masturbate'.