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BETTER OFF
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
In a more fortunate or prosperous condition
Example:
is better off than his classmate
Classified under:
Similar:
fortunate (having unexpected good fortune)
Context examples:
The infant had been placed with these good people to nurse: they were better off then.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
Mercury is retrograde this month until November 20, and with so many cross-currents that would affect your relationship, you will be far better off waiting to circulate.
(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)
You will allow, that in both, man has the advantage of choice, woman only the power of refusal; that in both, it is an engagement between man and woman, formed for the advantage of each; and that when once entered into, they belong exclusively to each other till the moment of its dissolution; that it is their duty, each to endeavour to give the other no cause for wishing that he or she had bestowed themselves elsewhere, and their best interest to keep their own imaginations from wandering towards the perfections of their neighbours, or fancying that they should have been better off with anyone else.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
Soldiers, in active service, are not at all better off: and even in the quieter professions, there is a toil and a labour of the mind, if not of the body, which seldom leaves a man's looks to the natural effect of time.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
She could not at first tell why she felt sad, but she became conscious at last of great longing to go home; then she knew she was homesick, although she was a thousand times better off with Mother Holle than with her mother and sister.
(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)
Maria might be very glad to see her at Sotherton now and then, but she would not think of asking her to live there; and I am sure she is better off here; and besides, I cannot do without her.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
The woman was better off; she might have the assistance of fine clothes, and the privilege of bashfulness, but the man had only his own good sense to depend on; and when she considered how peculiarly unlucky poor Mr. Elton was in being in the same room at once with the woman he had just married, the woman he had wanted to marry, and the woman whom he had been expected to marry, she must allow him to have the right to look as little wise, and to be as much affectedly, and as little really easy as could be.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
At least a dozen men, some of them little better off than he was, explained to him that wheel and car were no longer joined by any physical bond.
(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
