off
/ɔf/30 verbsVowel-initial — links backwardsContact is broken: something detaches, leaves, or stops.
OFF is about breaking contact. A physical thing comes away (take off, cut off), a person departs (set off, head off), or a process stops dead (turn off, call off).
This is why put off means postpone: you push the event away from now. And why show off means display excessively: you are pushing your quality out at people.
What it does to the sound
OFF is vowel-initial, so the verb's last consonant links onto it — call off is “ca-loff”, cut off is “cu-doff” with a flapped T. The vowel is /ɔ/ in General American, not the /ɒ/ of British English.
What OFF means
Detachment — come away from a surface
Physical separation of one thing from another.
Departure — leave, often quickly
A journey or movement begins, away from here.
Stopping — switch to zero
A running process or scheduled event is terminated.
Every verb that takes OFF
The complete list — 30 of them. The section above groups the common ones by what OFF is doing.