ring off the hook
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To be extremely busy with phone calls or requests
Literally: a phone ringing continuously
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
The phones began ringing off the hook at Rugby US a few months before the World Cup began, with callers wanting to know when and where they could see the matches on television.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “ring off the hook” mean?
To be extremely busy with phone calls or requests Literally: a phone ringing continuously
Is “ring off the hook” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.