<adv.all> couldn't give the figures offhand we decided offhand to go to Canada she had made these remarks offhandedly
in a casually inconsiderate manner
<adv.all> replied offhand, his mind a million miles away she threw him over offhandedly without even a Dear-John letter [ adj ]
with little or no preparation or forethought
<adj.all> his ad-lib comments showed poor judgment an extemporaneous piano recital an extemporary lecture an extempore skit an impromptu speech offhand excuses trying to sound offhanded and reassuring an off-the-cuff toast a few unrehearsed comments
casually thoughtless or inconsiderate
<adj.all> an offhand manner she treated most men with offhand contempt
Offhand \Off"hand`\, a. Instant; unprepared; ready; extemporaneous; unrehearsed; as, an offhand speech; offhand excuses; an offhand comment. -- adv. In an offhand manner; as, he replied offhand.
In the course of quoting Alexander Cockburn last week on the Forbes 400 and their uninterest in public policy making, I made offhand reference to his "marrying rich."
While declining to give an "offhand" opinion of the suit, Thornburgh said he was encouraged by recent Supreme Court rulings upholding U.S. Customs Service drug testing and post-accident drug testing by railroads.
But the first movement alternates brilliant, propulsive music with oddly sour-flavoured slower sections, whose air of unease Gavrilov rather underplayed, so that the effect was almost offhand, or absent-minded.
An offhand comment by a Denver radio talk show host that Bush's clothes don't fit the frontier image started the search for the perfect _ if imaginary _ presidential cowboy wardrobe.
The title story, for instance, makes moving use of brief, lowkey, seemingly offhand and unconnected anecdotes to depict the growing closeness between a man and his current girlfriend's son.
William Bolcom is obviously part of this trend to bigness, and he has a typically offhand explanation for it all: "A lot of us feel the orchestra's days are numbered, and we want to get our licks in while we can."
Henry Kravis of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, for instance, provoked loud hisses with an offhand comment at a Financial Women's Association meeting in New York in March.
But if his goal is valid, his book is offhand and mechanical, its action dictated in large part not by the temperaments of his own characters but by the need to parallel Aeschylus.