off the cuff

1. 1.

   without preparation

   “the presidential candidate made a remark off the cuff”

Questions about off the cuff

What does off the cuff mean?

off the cuff means "without preparation".

Is off the cuff a common word?

off the cuff is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.