offside

1. 1.

   (sport) the mistake of occupying an illegal position on the playing field (in football, soccer, ice hockey, field hockey, etc.)

   Broadermistake

   sport

1. 1.

   illegally beyond a prescribed line or area or ahead of the ball or puck

   “the touchdown was nullified because the left tackle was offside”

   Synonymsoffsides

   Antonymsonside

   sport

1. 1.

   illegally in advance of the ball or puck

Other forms of offside

plural

offsides·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about offside

What does offside mean?

offside means "(sport) the mistake of occupying an illegal position on the playing field (in football, soccer, ice hockey, field hockey, etc.)". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in offside?

offside has 2 syllables: off-side. The stress falls on "off".

What is another word for offside?

Close synonyms include offsides. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

What is the opposite of offside?

The recorded antonyms are onside.

Is offside a common word?

offside is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.