off vs posticous

off

adj
  • Inappropriate; untoward. 

  • Inoperative, disabled. 

  • On the side furthest from the kerb (the right-hand side if one drives on the left). 

  • Circumstanced. 

  • Cancelled; not happening. 

  • Disgusting, repulsive, abhorrent. 

  • Presently unavailable. 

  • Started on the way. 

  • Rancid, rotten, gone bad. 

  • Less than normal, in temperament or in result. 

  • The off front wheel came loose. 

  • Not fitted; not being worn. 

  • Designating a time when one is not performing to the best of one's abilities. 

  • In, or towards the half of the field away from the batsman's legs; the right side for a right-handed batsman. 

  • Far; off to the side. 

  • Designating a time when one is not strictly attentive to business or affairs, or is absent from a post, and, hence, a time when affairs are not urgent. 

adv
  • Offstage. 

  • Used in various other ways specific to individual idiomatic phrases, e.g. bring off, show off, put off, tell off, etc. See the entry for the individual phrase. 

  • Into a state of non-operation or non-existence. 

  • So as to remove or separate, or be removed or separated. 

  • In a direction away from the speaker or other reference point. 

noun
  • Beginning; starting point. 

prep
  • Placed after a number (of products or parts, as if a unit), in commerce or engineering. 

  • Removed or subtracted from. 

  • Used to indicate the location or direction of one thing relative to another, implying adjacency or accessibility via. 

  • Out of the possession of. 

  • Detached, separated, excluded or disconnected from; away from a position of attachment or connection to. 

  • Used to express location at sea relative to land or mainland. 

  • No longer wanting or taking. 

  • Not positioned upon, or away from a position upon. 

verb
  • To switch off. 

  • To kill. 

posticous

adj
  • posterior 

  • Situated on the outer side of a filament; said of an extrorse anther. 

How often have the words off and posticous occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )