offshore

Etymology

From off- + shore.

adj

1. Moving away from the shore.
2. 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 their period of direct military rule and to elect their first country magistrates in 1993. 1992, Richard Louis Edmonds, edited by Graham P. Chapman and Kathleen M. Baker, The Changing Geography of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau (The Changing Geography of Asia), Routledge, →OCLC, →OL, page 160
   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. 2020-12-22, Henrik Pryser Libell, Derrick Bryson Taylor, “Norway’s Supreme Court Makes Way for More Arctic Drilling”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
3. 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. 2000-06-15, Lisa Guernsey, “Offshore Scanners”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
   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 place that has become a symbol of secrecy and intrigue. 2009-10-03, Landon Thomas Jr, “Offshore Haven Considers a Heresy: Taxation”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
   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. 2009-12-18, “Guantánamo Must Be Closed”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
   It begins with the anodyne name for the procedures — “offshore processing” — as if these desperate human beings were just an accumulation of data. 2016-05-23, Roger Cohen, “Australia’s Offshore Cruelty”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

adv

1. Away from the shore.
2. At some distance from the shore.

verb

1. To move industrial production from one region to another or from one country to another, usually seeking lower business costs, like 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. July 25, 2005, Robert J. Samuelson, “The World Is Still Round”, in Newsweek, page 49
   India has become the leading destination for offshored services. 2009, Adjiedj Bakas, Beyond the Crisis: The Future of Capitalism, Meghan-Kiffer Press, 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. 2010, Paul Craig Roberts, How the Economy Was Lost, AK Press, page 8

noun

1. An area or 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. 1884, Report of the Commissioner of Fisheries to the Secretary of Commerce and Labor, Washington: United States Bureau of Fisheries, page XXVI
2. 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. October 11, 1958, “Signs of improvement”, in Business Week, page 36
3. 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, page 31
   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 the workers were called. 2001, Cindy Hahamovitch, “In America Life is Given Away”, in Catherine McNicol Stock, Robert D. Johnston, editors, The Countryside in the Age of the Modern State, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, page 136