Call off means to cancel something planned, or to stop something that's already underway: call off the wedding, call off the search. It's used when changed circumstances mean it no longer makes sense to hold or continue something.
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call off + noun; call + noun + off; call it off
- They called off the wedding just two weeks before the big day.
- The strike was called off after the company agreed to raise wages.
- We had to call the meeting off because the client's flight was cancelled.
What changed
First versionOnly five people signed up for the workshop, so the organisers decided to call off it.
RevisionOnly five people signed up for the workshop, so the organisers decided to call it off.
Call off is a separable phrasal verb. A noun can go either after off (call off the picnic) or between call and off (call the picnic off). But a pronoun (it, them) only ever goes between the two parts: call it off, not call off it.
Call off means to cancel completely, while put off means to postpone. Compare: The match was called off — there's no match at all now; The match was put off until Sunday — it will still happen, just later. Call it a day is a separate expression, meaning to stop working for the day.
Your turn
The picnic was planned for Saturday, but it started raining hard, so we had to ___.
Show the answer
call it off — The pronoun it, standing for the picnic, has to go between call and off: call it off. Call off it sounds wrong — pronouns don't go after the particle in separable phrasal verbs.
Describe a time plans had to be cancelled because of weather, illness or other circumstances. Say what was cancelled and why.
We had to call off our weekend trip to the coast because my son came down with a fever the night before.
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