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
  • Circumstances change — people pair off, have children, choose lives that seem at odds with the dreams of youth.
    Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times, 28 Mar. 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
  • In January 2023, the network officially pulled the pair off the series.
    Julia Moore, Peoplemag, 7 May 2024
  • Soon, the women paired off into their own conversations.
    Emily Harnett, Harper's Magazine, 26 Apr. 2024
  • 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
  • This week's challenge would be for the chefs to pair off and create two dishes that represent the theme of duality — a signature of Wright’s creations.
    Rachel Bernhard, Journal Sentinel, 10 Apr. 2024
  • 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

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'pair off.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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