putting-off

Hearing that there are ability tests is definitely a putting-off factor, but that's because my experience of people testing my ability has always related to benefits officers trying to prove that I'm putting it on!

My Monstrous Body Elizabeth McClung 2008

We name it the subjective habit, personality; while the right illumination is a transparency, a putting-off of shoes, garments, body, and constitution, lest these should intercept or stain the ray.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 76, February, 1864 Various

All kinds of handicrafts in the city, &c., tradesmen and mechanics, were, as I have said before, out of employ; and this occasioned the putting-off and dismissing an innumerable number of journeymen and workmen of all sorts, seeing nothing was done relating to such trades but what might be said to be absolutely necessary.

A Journal Of The Plague Year Defoe, Daniel, 1661?-1731 1935

The putting-off method of meeting awkward questions, now generally recognized as dangerous in matters of natural history, is just as dangerous in the religious sphere.

The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day Evelyn Underhill 1908

"To-morrow I will look on thee" -- but that never comes for us, while the accustomed putting-off ever grows and grows.

Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology Anonymous 1902

But would even that be anything more than a putting-off?

Beyond John Galsworthy 1900

But would even that be anything more than a putting-off?

Complete Project Gutenberg John Galsworthy Works John Galsworthy 1900

Aldous, on his return from Mellor, had first of all given his great-aunt the news of the coroner's verdict, and had then gone on to break to her the putting-off of the marriage.

Marcella Humphry Ward 1885

It made me uneasy that at such a time when he most required some right principle and purpose he should have this captivating looseness and putting-off of everything, this airy dispensing with all principle and purpose, at his elbow.

Bleak House Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 1853

Though all things shall be remembered in the judgment, and though all that he has ever done or spoken shall have left some stamp for good or ill upon his immortal spirit, yet what a putting-off of this lower life shall there be at that day!

Sermons. [Vol. I.] 1808-1892 1843