"offshore" definition, meaning, and origin

Adjective

Moving away from the shore.
Located in the sea away from the coast.
- an offshore oil rig
- Since 1949, Taiwan has remained under Nationalist (Kuomintang) control along with the off-shore islands of Chin-men (Kinmen) and Ma-tsu (Lien-chiang County) in Fujian Province. Chin-men and Lien-chiang County are to end...
- The judges said that the right to a clean environment did not bar the government from drilling for offshore oil, and that Norway did not legally carry the responsibility for emissions stemming from oil it has exported....
Located in another country, especially one having beneficial tax laws or labor costs.
- American companies use offshore services for one reason, said Herbert F. Schantz, a consultant in Sterling, Va.: cheap labor. - 2000 June 15, Lisa Guernsey, “Offshore Scanners”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived...
- With pressure building in Europe and the United States for a systemwide crackdown on offshore tax havens the Caymans prefer to call themselves a tax-neutral portal Britain appears determined to make an example of a...
- Moving the prisoners is an indispensable step toward closing an extra-legal offshore lockup that has stained this nation’s reputation and become a recruitment tool for terrorists. - 2009 December 18, “Guantánamo Must Be...

Etymology tree English off- English shore English offshore From off- + shore.

An area of or portion of sea away from the shore.
- This problem, so far as the offshores of the United States is concerned, is one that is eminently worthy of the attention of the United States Fish Commission and the support of Congress in its attempt to solve it. -...
An island, outcrop, or other land away from shore.
- The Nationalists see that they have nothing to gain—in fact, a lot to lose—by hanging onto the offshores as military bases. - 1958 October 11, “Signs of improvement”, in Business Week, page 36:
Something or someone in, from, or associated with another country.
- If costs are unequally imposed by governments on their offshores, the government makes the U.S. banking industry less competitive. - 1984, Richard H. Blum, Offshore Haven Banks, Trusts, and Companies, New York: Praeger,...
- Though American legislators renewed restrictive immigration policies in the two decades after the war, they allowed employers of farmworkers to import some 4.5 million Mexican "braceros" and Caribbean "offshores," as...

To move industrial production from one region to another or from one country to another, in order to seek lower business costs, such as labor.
- The McKinsey Global Institute says that 750,000 American service jobs have been “offshored” out of total U.S. jobs of about 140 million. - 2005 July 25, Robert J. Samuelson, “The World Is Still Round”, in Newsweek, page...
- India has become the leading destination for offshored services. - 2009, Adjiedj Bakas, Beyond the Crisis: The Future of Capitalism, Meghan-Kiffer Press, →ISBN, page 109:
- Corporations offshore their production, because they can more cheaply produce abroad what they sell to Americans. When corporations bring their offshored production to the U.S. to sell, the goods count as imports. -...