Meaning
Likely to happen or appear before long; imminent without having quite arrived. It is applied to expected news, changes, deals, or events - a reorganisation is in the offing - and it keeps a literal nautical sense in which a ship in the offing is one visible out in the distant open sea from the shore. Neutral to slightly journalistic register, used of events, announcements, and deals rather than people. It implies expectation, not certainty, and should not be confused with the unrelated slang use of offing for killing. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The offing is the stretch of sea visible from land beyond the near inshore water; the noun, formed from off plus the suffix -ing, is recorded from the 1620s. Purchas his Pilgrimes carries a literal use in 1625, a vessel anchoring 'in the offing to sea', and a naval memoir of 1703 reports small ships seen in the offing. Because a ship sighted there could usually reach harbour by the next tide, the phrase came to suggest something approaching rather than merely distant. Etymonline dates the transferred phrase in the offing to 1779, originally in the sense of the distant future, with the modern impending sense developed by 1914; the Phrase Finder's earliest figurative example is American, a Portland directory of 1850 in which a tax bill or draft notice was said to be in the offing.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- lie in the offing
- something in the offing
- wait in the offing
Usage Examples
- With two scouts watching him every week, a transfer to a bigger club seems to be in the offing.
- Staff were told that an announcement about redundancies was in the offing before the spring review.
- The fishermen waited in the offing for the fog to lift before following the pilot boat into the harbour.