off guardadv.adj.

1748 S. Richardson Clarissa V. lxii. 373 Mabell soon returned with the mantua-maker's journeywoman..and then Dorcas went off guard.

1794 J. C. Cross Apparition ii. i. 27 Chearly. Come, take a pull... Larry. Not a single sup, Chearly;—off guard I'm your man, but not upon duty—it's so unsoldier-like.

1800 S. T. Coleridge tr. F. Schiller Death Wallenstein i. viii. 25 Treason and mutiny!.. Tiefenbach's soldiers, when I gave the orders To go off guard.

1847 E. Brontë Wuthering Heights I. ii. 32 ‘It will not suit me to permit anyone the range of the place while I am off guard!’ said the unmannerly wretch.

1884 W. Besant Dorothy Forster III. xxxix. 267 That chance must be sought after dark, and pretty late, when prisoners are all locked up and turnkeys and wardens off guard.

1971 B. W. Aldiss Soldier Erect 167 When we were off guard, we kipped on one of the station platforms outside the RTO office, under our mozzy-nets.

1776 G. Washington Let. 21 Mar. (1931) IV. 415 I cannot but suspect they are waiting for some opportunity to give us a Stroke, at a moment when they conceive us to be off guard.

1827 S. B. H. Judah Buccaneers I. 175 Here the steed..slipped and stumbled woefully along the icy ground—being either off guard and unprepared to display his points, or owing probably to a certain uselessness of the vision.

1896 H. W. Mabie Bks. & Culture 42 Essential refinement and genuine breeding are revealed when the man is off guard and acts and speaks instinctively.

1899 E. E. Hale Bread on Waters in Brick Moon & other Stories 225 This threw me off guard, and I said I supposed I had them, but I could not find them.

1959 Shakespeare Q. 10 355 Achilles, inflamed by anger at the death of Patroclus, catches him [sc. Hector] off-guard during the battle.

1993 L. Pemberton Platinum Coast (BNC) 150 Stephen liked to be able to wrong-foot the people who worked for him and was a master at taking them off-guard.

2001 Terrorizer Sept. 70/4 Using a female voice to throw people just a little bit off-guard.

1937 Sci. Monthly 44 459/2 Even the hard-headed scientist turns practical philosopher in his off-guard moments.

1950 L. A. Cook & E. F. Cook Sociol. Approach to Educ. (ed. 2) xvi. 390 Do students themselves rate their community experiences as of basic worth? Do their off-guard comments agree with their formal ratings?

1976 M. Tripp Woman in Bed xii. 127 He couldn't prove it. His best chance of success lay in getting an off-guard admission from me.

1995 Time Out 6 Dec. 108/4 An extraordinary catalogue of off-hand revelations, unwitting gaffes, blind prejudice and unalloyed hucksterism, captured in off-guard moments from Bush, Clinton and Perot during 1992's presidential election campaign.