How to Use off-the-record in a Sentence

off-the-record

adjective
  • At one point during our off-the-record conversation, his pager beeped.
    — Rania Abouzeid, The New Yorker, 18 Sep. 2024
  • Board members will meet three times a year to provide off-the-record feedback and story ideas to reporters.
    — Kayla Huynh, jsonline.com, 2 Oct. 2025
  • The goal is to explore the dispute through candid, off-the-record conversation.
    — Michael McCann, Sportico.com, 20 Oct. 2025
  • Yahoo invited me to an off-the-record dinner at Le Veau d’Or.
    — Max Tani, semafor.com, 29 Dec. 2025
  • At the resort, Thomas gave a speech at an off-the-record conservative conference.
    — Justin Elliott, Fortune, 18 Dec. 2023
  • The documents, or portions of them, were also shared with several reporters on an off-the-record basis.
    — Tracy Wang, Rolling Stone, 28 Oct. 2023
  • Those same sources say liberties were taken with the Atlantic piece, including that key off-the-record details and quotes were used on the record.
    — Tatiana Siegel, Variety, 25 July 2023
  • Our conversations are studded with long, off-the-record interjections.
    — Seyward Darby, Longreads, 12 June 2024
  • Our conversations are studded with long, off-the-record interjections.
    — Kathryn Vanarendonk, Vulture, 4 June 2024
  • The first is stealthy, an off-the-record session with the Round Table, a group of government, academia, and industry types.
    — Steven Levy, WIRED, 5 Sep. 2023
  • The comments were alleged to have happened in an off-the-record conference in chambers, so they weren’t recorded, nor was a transcript produced.
    — Madeline Buckley, Chicago Tribune, 29 June 2023
  • What happened next during the hearing — which the report states is key to the case — was an off-the-record sidebar between Joseph and the attorneys.
    — Flint McColgan, Boston Herald, 6 Nov. 2025
  • Each board will meet three times a year for off-the-record discussions facilitated by Journal Sentinel reporters.
    — Kayla Huynh, jsonline.com, 2 Oct. 2025
  • Those conversations are a delicate dance of on-the-record and off-the-record context about roster usage, player health, play calling and game strategy.
    — Eben Novy-Williams, Sportico.com, 3 Sep. 2019
  • Sometimes these occur during our quarterly CEO forums, in public but off-the-record exchanges.
    — Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Time, 13 Jan. 2026
  • In her off-the-record remarks that day, the vice president made a passing reference to the 34 individuals who once lived on the property against their will.
    — Robert Draper, New York Times, 12 Apr. 2024
  • The paper reported that Williamson and Wilkins never met, had one off-the-record phone call, and exchanged emails during the course of Williamson’s reporting.
    — Staff Author, PEOPLE, 24 Apr. 2026
  • Odds are, though, that Israeli authorities won’t soon release evidence to back up any off-the-record charges that Arouri was tied to the three teens’ kidnapping and murder.
    — Matthew Levitt, Foreign Affairs, 9 July 2014
  • The situation has reached a strange netherworld of off-the-record confirmations and denials where one set of sources says one thing and another says the opposite, and most likely no one is telling the whole truth.
    — Jem Aswad Variety Entertainment News Service, al, 23 Aug. 2023
  • But through time, trust and many off-the-record conversations, those six people helped create a foundation that would eventually lead them to the CEOs.
    — ABC News, 24 Mar. 2026
  • But when the conversation slides into off-the-record, her hands flutter in front of her, moving rapidly from tucking a strand of straight hair behind her ear to adjusting the Libra ring on her hand.
    — Ct Jones, Rolling Stone, 19 June 2023
  • Through voiceover, Wang shares details from off-the-record conversations which unveil Payá’s ambiguous feelings about the former president.
    — Carlos Aguilar, Variety, 19 Nov. 2024
  • In contrast, the modern ombuds is an independent, confidential, impartial, and off-the-record resource for today’s workers.
    — Anna Oakes, Quartz, 5 May 2023
  • In February, Carro held a 27-minute, off-the-record bench conference during an otherwise public hearing.
    — ABC News, 3 June 2026
  • Her leadership has been instrumental in halting off-the-record intergovernmental meetings.
    — Chicago Tribune, 7 Mar. 2023
  • Puck promises off-the-record conversations with editors in their top subscription tier, and Lauren Sherman often recaps her off-the-record dinners on her podcast and in her column.
    — Max Tani, semafor.com, 29 Dec. 2025
  • The heated exchange focused on whether prosecutors could have an off-the-record discussion with their own FBI witness about the use of confidential informants.
    — Quinn Owen, ABC News, 23 Feb. 2023
  • In an earlier era, athletic departments cultivated their most devoted supporters through backroom access—off-the-record chats, private events and insider tidbits for top donors.
    — Daniel Libit, Sportico.com, 18 Nov. 2025
  • However, the meeting after the meeting creates an environment where decisions are often undone or altered by informal, off-the-record conversations.
    — Dr. Diane Hamilton, Forbes, 21 Mar. 2025
  • Dialog has been described as Bilderberg (an off-the-record gathering of political and business elite) meets Silicon Valley salon.
    — Mary Whitfill Roeloffs, Forbes.com, 18 June 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'off-the-record.' 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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