▪ I. ˈcast-off, ppl. a. and n.1
[f. cast ppl. a.]
A. ppl. a. Thrown off, rejected from use, discarded: as clothes, a favourite, a lover, etc.
| 1746 W. Thompson R.N. Advoc. (1757) 40 Cast-off Hunters, turn'd upon the Road for Post Chaise Service. 1755 Connoisseur No. 80 A cast-off suit of my wife's. 1809 W. Irving Knickerb. (1861) 139 To strut at his heels, wear his cast-off clothes. 1840 Mill Diss. & Disc. (1859) I. 235 The cast-off extravagances of Goethe and Schiller. 1844 Stanley Arnold (1858) I. iv. 169 The worn and cast-off skin. 1853 Rogers Ecl. Faith 44 To array your thoughts in the tatters of the cast-off Bible. |
B. n.
1. A person or thing that is cast-off or abandoned as worthless or useless. (For the plural cast-offs is more according to analogy.)
| 1741 Richardson Pamela I. 49 And how..must they have look'd, like old Cast-offs. 1850 Blackie æschylus I. 82 Thou shalt be From the city of the free Thyself a cast-off. 1867 Smyth Sailor's Word-bk., Cast-offs, landsmen's clothes. 1872 Spurgeon Treas. Dav. Ps. lxxvii. 7 The objects of his contemptuous reprobation, his everlasting cast-offs. 1884 Longm. Mag. Apr. 607 Our horses, casts-off from the flat. |
2. Printing. A calculation of the amount of space which will be required by a given amount of copy. (Cf. cast v. 79 j.)
| 1898 J. Southward Mod. Printing i. xlii. 263 These two lines must be reckoned for in the cast off. 1917 F. S. Henry Printing for School & Shop iii. 32 If the cast-off leaves but two or three lines on the last page, it is better to have the few previous pages each a line long. 1934 Proc. Brit. Acad. XIX. 388 In February 1903 fifty Letters of Erasmus were dispatched to the Press for a ‘cast-off’. |
▪ II. cast-off, n.2 Gunnery.
[f. cast n. + off.]
The ‘twist’ of a gun-stock, the extent to which the stock is thrown laterally out of the line of the longitudinal axis of the barrel.
| 1881 Greener Gun 249 He adjusts the bend or crook of the gun, and the amount of cast-off. Ibid. 432 The object of the cast-off is to bring the centre of the barrels in a line with the shooter's eye. |