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off-base

off-base

adjective

located outside the perimeters of a military base.
off base

off base

Wrong, relying on a mistaken premise, as in His description of the accounting system was totally off base. This metaphoric term originated in baseball, where a runner who steps off a base can be put out. [c. 1940]

Synonyms

off-base

American

[awf-beys, of-] / ˈɔfˈbeɪs, ˈɒf- /

adjective

located outside the perimeters of a military base.

off-base housing for officers.

off base Idioms

Wrong, relying on a mistaken premise, as in His description of the accounting system was totally off base. This metaphoric term originated in baseball, where a runner who steps off a base can be put out. [c. 1940]

Etymology

Origin of off-base

First recorded in 1935–40

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

off-base off base

Ms. Lee is equally off-base, delivering her lines with a mix of sangfroid and sarcasm as if C-suite officers are used to getting chased around by super-killers from another domain.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2025

The book was spectacularly off-base, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman explained at the time.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 7, 2025

The contamination — detected in the early 1980s — was blamed on a poorly maintained fuel depot and indiscriminate dumping on the base, as well as from an off-base dry cleaner.

From Seattle Times ● Jan. 31, 2024

Self-serving defensive claims and off-base sports analogies will not turn things around.

From Slate ● Dec. 8, 2023

It's nothing compared to the Bay of Pigs or my failure for four years to integrate off-base military housing.

From Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 by Morris J. MacGregor

The irony, however: That bully wasn’t completely off base.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 15, 2026

That said, it doesn’t necessarily mean Balchunas’s broader premise is off base, Wallerstein noted.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 11, 2026

However, he’s completely off base to advocate for the CFP national championship game to be hosted there.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 3, 2026

The result is that nothing jarring is pulling the viewer out of the story because something as basic as posture or a gesture is so far off base it’s not believable.

From Salon ● Oct. 28, 2025

Suddenly he didn’t seem so far off base.

From "Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023