Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to hurt, to kill; thus taking-off n., a murder.

1825		Age (London) 17 July 76/2: [T]he reader has [...] been horrified by a recitation of the ‘cruel murder’ of one person—of another taking in arsenic for physic, and being consequently taken off.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1900		Bulletin (Sydney) 1 Dec. 11/2: Styche was the gentleman accused of persistently offering a doctor £200 by anonymous letter if he would murder Mrs. Styche. [...] Mrs. Styche’s name wasn’t mentioned directly in any of the letters, and Styche [...] never opened any direct communication about the necessity of taking-off Mrs. Styche.
1915		J. Buchan Thirty-Nine Steps (1930) 9: They want a big occasion for the taking off, with eyes of all Europe on it.
1931		W.N. Burns One-Way Ride 102: The rapid sequence of events in gangland following O’Bannion’s taking off would clearly have ‘laid the finger’ [...] on the men behind the murder.
1966		J. Mills Panic in Needle Park (1971) 30: I think if I went out there with a knife or somethin’ and I hurt someone who hadn’t done nothin’ to nobody . . . I ain’t never done nothin’ like that. I mean not to a square person. I’ve taken off connections and people like that, but not a square.
1971		R. Woodley Dealer 84: I don’t put no money out to get nobody hit. Now, if you mean pay somebody to take some guy off, you mean kick his ass, that’s different. That doesn’t mean kill him.
1977		(con. 1969) M. Herr Dispatches 229: A trail which the Special Forces had rigged with more than twenty booby traps, any one of which could have taken me off.
2000		G. Pelecanos Shame the Devil 291: Y’all lookin’ to take us off?
2006		Simon & Burns ‘Boys of Summer’ Wire ser. 4 ep. 1 [TV script] You say the word, we take off that whole motherfuckin’ corner.

2. to execute; thus taking-off n., execution.

1830		Lytton Paul Clifford II 125: In nine cases out of ten our bravest fellows have been taken off by the treachery of some early sweetheart or the envy of some boyish friend.
1881		Wkly Kansas Chief 29 Sept. 1/3: It pointed to the culprit being ‘possessed by the devil’. This [...] made his ‘taking off’ all the more desirable.
1890		Bulletin (Sydney) 19 July 12/1: The Age thinks that one of the recommendations of execution by electricity is its suitability for the ‘taking off’ of women, whose comparative immunity from strangulation worries the Melbourne journal a good deal.

3. to deprive of money.

1899–1900		C.L. Cullen Tales of the Ex-Tanks 59: I started in to play poker [...] They took it off me so fast that I felt myself catching cold.
1989		B. Bryson Lost Continent 274: That must be an exciting job for a college graduate, to sit in a hut in the middle of nowhere and take ten dollars off a tourist every two or three hours.

4. to rob; thus taking-off n., robbing.

1937		(con. 1905–25) E.H. Sutherland Professional Thief (1956) 14: As soon as he takes off a score, he leaves the store, plants it, and goes back for another.
1940		D. Maurer Big Con 10: If they took off scores of [...] two hundred dollars, they were satisfied.
1951		D. Dressler Parole Chief 265: He took off the big one, got himself a stake.
1968		N. Heard Howard Street 66: We gon’ git enough fightin’ tryin’ to take off some of these chumps’ money.
1977		J. Sayles Union Dues (1978) 331: Hype was tryin to take some old lady off.
1987		T. Wolfe Bonfire of the Vanities 582: He knows somebody’s been up there trying to take off cars.
1992		T. Williams Crackhouse 37: A great variety of words refer to deceiving or stealing: there is much talk of ‘vic-ing’ (victimizing), ‘gaming’ (verbally conning), sancoching (stealing), and ‘taking off’ (robbing).
1999		E. Bunker Mr Blue 306: I took off a cocktail lounge in the Rampart district.
2006		G. Pelecanos Night Gardener 324: Those motherfuckers took me off and shot my nephew.
2012		G. Pelecanos (con. 1972) What It Was 80: Shit, you gonna take off Ward now.

5. to obtain, e.g. money.

1960		C. Cooper Jr Syndicate (1998) 54: He conspired with the three dodos to lift the plans to take off the bank caper.
1969		‘Iceberg Slim’ Pimp 150: I should take off a coupla grand for my end to carry out.
1972		N.C. Heard To Reach a Dream 38: If he could get that kind of job he’d take off the money with no strain.
1999		E. Bunker Mr Blue 224: I realized how slickly the used car salesman who had sold me the Jag had taken me off.

6. to make a raid on.

1978

R. Price Ladies’ Man (1985) 158: Like a G-man getting ready to take off a speakeasy.