How to Use pair off in a Sentence

pair off

phrasal verb

• Two of them have already paired off, their knees touching in the corner.
  — Evan Sterrett, Los Angeles Times, 18 Oct. 2023
• The primate wing of the group is only slightly more prone to pairing off.
  — Blake Edgar, Scientific American, 1 Oct. 2016
• No one paired off or hooked up; Rebecca had a boyfriend back home, and anyway that wasn’t the point.
  — Polly Stewart, Good Housekeeping, 11 July 2023
• Jason Isaacs Isaacs was announced alongside three of the ladies above, which might mean he’ll be paired off with one of them.
  — Vulture, 17 Jan. 2024
• The latest season of Bachelor in Paradise saw Russell and Jones paired off as a couple by the second episode.
  — Shania Russell, EW.com, 11 Dec. 2023
• In a one-to-one case of partner-swapping, Ryann and James were each paired off with the respective half of another couple, Trey and Riah, in episode one.
  — Philip Ellis, Men's Health, 27 Aug. 2023
• First light Just before sunrise, Dmytro’s battalion approached a shallow sandbar and paired off in twos.
  — Serhii Korolchuk, Washington Post, 4 Jan. 2024
• The molecule is made up of the chemical bases adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine—shortened to A, C, G, and T—which pair off to form a double helix.
  — Emily Mullin, WIRED, 4 Dec. 2023
• He was given a column, and paired off against the venerable Russell Kirk, who was always right but, off at the end of his long run, not always engagingly so.
  — Neal B. Freeman, National Review, 20 Feb. 2024
• One of the most divisive aspects of the series, even among fans, was its conventional dénouement: Carrie ends up with Big, and all the other protagonists happily pair off with men.
  — Rachel Syme, The New Yorker, 19 June 2023
• Each new term of a Somos-k sequence is defined by pairing off previous terms, multiplying each pair together, adding up the pairs, and then dividing by the term k positions back in the sequence.
  — Alex Stone, Quanta Magazine, 16 Nov. 2023
• The concerts settled into a durable format years ago, with the first half featuring each guitarist playing two or three tunes solo, and the second half pairing off players in different combinations (with an all-hands-on-deck finale).
  — Andrew Gilbert, The Mercury News, 22 Feb. 2024
• The letter writer sought guidance about how to navigate the aftermath of the breakup, particularly as the members of the throuple continued to pair off in different configurations.
  — Kwame Anthony Appiah, New York Times, 26 Apr. 2023

Last Updated: 24 Sep 2024