go off the boil
English edit
Pronunciation edit
Verb edit
go off the boil (third-person singular simple present goes off the boil, present participle going off the boil, simple past went off the boil, past participle gone off the boil)
- (UK, Australia) To cease to boil when heat is no longer applied.
- 1891, Nelson A. Dunning, editor, The Farmers' Alliance History and Agricultural Digest:
- All puddings must be boiled in plenty of water, turned frequently, kept closely covered, and never allowed to go off the boil.
- 1972, Diana Kennedy, Craig Claibourne, The Cuisines of Mexico:
- That is the reason for the coin. You will be able to hear it dancing about, and it will tell you if the water goes off the boil or is getting dangerously low.
- (idiomatic, UK, Australia) To lose interest; to pall.
- 1955, John Baker White, The Big Lie:
- As one of the rearguard put it, "We laid up until the Hun had gone off the boil a bit and slipped out the following night."
- 1987, Rosalind Miles, The Female Form: Women Writers and the Conquest of the Novel:
- But John, not surprisingly, has gone off the boil, and feels nothing for Annette so strongly as an intense weariness and desire to be rid of her.
- 2004, Neil Gaiman, American Gods:
- Wednesday to Shadow, "I don't sleep. It's overrated. A bad habit I do my best to avoid - in company, wherever possible, and the young lady may go off the boil if I don't get back to her."
- 2009, Diana Athill, Somewhere Towards the End: A Memoir:
- By then we'd gone off the boil sexually and he was even less keen than I was about 'marriedness', so it was more like friends deciding to share a flat than the setting-up of a ménage.
- (idiomatic, UK, Australia) To become of diminished intensity or urgency.
- (idiomatic, UK, Australia) To become less successful.