off the hook

1. 1.

   freed from danger or blame or obligation

   “I let him off the hook with a mild reprimand”

   Similarsafe

Questions about off the hook

What does off the hook mean?

off the hook means "freed from danger or blame or obligation".

Is off the hook a common word?

off the hook 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.