tear-off

See also: tearoff and tear off

English

Etymology

Deverbal from tear off.

Noun

tear-off (plural tear-offs)

  1. A strip or sheet of paper, plastic film, etc., that is designed to be removed by tearing or pulling off.
    My visor was covered in mud, and I had used up all the tear-offs.
  2. (graphical user interface) A pull-down menu that can be detached from its parent menu bar and dragged around the screen.
    • 2009, John K. Ousterhout, Ken Jones, Tcl and the Tk Toolkit:
      Tear-offs are rarely found in modern interfaces, though, so typically you'll want to disable the tear-off feature by default.
  3. (programming) A COM (Component Object Model) interface that is instantiated only when explicitly requested.
    • 1998, Don Box, Essential COM, page 183:
      This makes tearoffs especially risky for objects that may be accessed remotely. Given all of the potential pitfalls of tearoffs, a logical question might be, "when are tearoffs appropriate?" There is no absolute answer; […]

Alternative forms

Adjective

tear-off (not comparable)

  1. Designed to be removed by tearing or pulling off.
    a tear-off strip, a tear-off protector
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