to come loose from whatever was holding it, or to work something loose: a sandal off a foot, an axe head off its handle, a settled people off their land
The picture behind this verb is something coming away from what held it in place. A sandal comes off a foot, an axe head comes off its handle, olives come off the branch, and a settled nation comes off the ground it had been fixed in. Hebrew uses one verb for all four, which is why English Bibles have to keep changing words.
It works in both directions. Sometimes the thing comes loose on its own, with nobody making it happen: the axe head flies off while a man is chopping wood, and the olives drop before there is anything to press. Sometimes someone does the loosening: Moses is told to get his sandals off, and God clears the nations out of Canaan. Deuteronomy 7:22 adds that this last kind of loosening is slow work, done "little by little" rather than in one sweep.
Deuteronomy 19:5 repays a second look. The Hebrew says only that the iron came loose "from the wood," and a translator has to decide which wood is meant: the handle the head was fitted to, or the tree the man was cutting. Most English versions choose the handle, and the accident that follows works either way.
When the thing worked loose is a people, this verb is doing something different from its neighbors. The common verb for expelling somebody by force (גָּרַשׁ) is about the shoving, and the verb behind Israel taking over the land (יָרַשׁ) is about who ends up holding it. This one keeps the physical image: a population prised off ground it was set into, the way a blade is worked off a handle.