square off
English
Verb
square off (third-person singular simple present squares off, present participle squaring off, simple past and past participle squared off)
- (Canada, US) To get ready for a confrontation (debate, argument, fight).
- 1984, Daniel Petrie Jr., Beverly Hills Cop, Paramount Pictures, spoken by Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy):
- Hey, man, don't square off on me with some bullshit.
- 2019 October 18, Thomas Meaney, “When James Baldwin Squared Off Against William F. Buckley Jr.”, in New York Times:
- When James Baldwin Squared Off Against William F. Buckley Jr. [title]
- Synonym: square up
- Antonym: stand down
- (industrial design) To increase the boxiness of (a design).
- After the aeronautically inspired curvaceous designs of the 1930s and 1940s, many American automotive designs of the 1950s through 1970s were somewhat more squared off.
- Antonym: round off
Further reading
- “square off”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.