adv. and a. [See OFF adv. 11 and quot. 1636 in WELL adv. 6 b.]
1. In predicate, normally without hyphen: a. Favorably circumstanced, fortunately situated; b. well provided, having no lack (const. for, † in); esp. c. in easy circumstances, well-to-do.
a. 1733. Trav. J. Massey, 18. I was well off if he only call’d me a Libertine.
1762. [see OFF adv. 11].
1796. T. Morton, Way to get Married, I. (1800), 5. Why don’t you go to the other inn? I’ll tell you—cause you know when you are well off, ha, ha!
a. 1865. Mrs. Gaskell, Wives & Dau., i. She was a silly little thing, and did not know when she was well off.
b. 1800. Coleridge, Lett. to Poole, in J. D. Campbell, Life (1894), 115. In gardens, etc., we are uncommonly well-off.
1879. Meredith, Egoist, viii. We are well-off for wild-flowers here.
c. 1849. Lever, Con Cregan, vi. I began to conceive a great grudge against all who were well off in life.
1854. Surtees, Handley Cr., ii. (1901), I. 16. He was pretty well off, that is to say, he had more than he spent.
1866. Trollope, Claverings, iv. If he dies, she will be well off, of course.
1889. ‘J. S. Winter,’ Mrs. Bob, i. He was rich (or at least certainly well off).
2. attrib. or adj. (with hyphen). In sense 1 c. Also absol.
1884, 1888. [see OFF adv. 11].
1893. Furnivall, Child-Marriages, Pref. 49. A well-off widow.
1899. Allbutt’s Syst. Med., VIII. 301. The poor and hard-working are subject to mental upset during nursing in much larger numbers than the well-off.
1908. Sociolog. Rev., April, 131. The long-continued refusal of the well-off classes to enter public hospitals.
Hence Well-offness nonce-wd.
1866. Mrs. Oliphant, Madonna Mary, vi. Hesketh’s well-off-ness … was trying to a man.
1915. H. James, Sense of Past (1917), 289. His being in 1820 as ‘rich’ as he is, or was, in 1910—which counts for an immense well-offness at the earlier period.
