Kevin's Watch

My family and I drove past the rageing west-country sea's the other day, and I commented that it was a one-off event [pronounced one-ov as in one of ten or whatever.] They all jumped on me and said it should be pronounced "One-off" [as in 'get off'] and yes - the spelling would seem to confirm this.

But surely it's not that simple. Take the following conversation:-

"How many lemons have you?
" I've got one of [pronounced ov] them."
"Give me two."
"I told you - I've only got one; it's a one-off."

Now surely that last 'off' should be pronounced 'ov'. It's a natural shortening of "I've got one of them".

Why would a word that clearly relates to 'of' [quantitative value] be suddenly spelt in the form of 'off', the descriptive adjective/verb [not sure which] form of it - and pronounced as such?

[nb The dictionaries seem on the face of it, to concur with my familes position rather than mine - a fact I'm finding rather difficult to live down .

As long as you don't write "would of" instead of "would have" as I've seen lots of British teens do, I'm fine.

Vader wrote:As long as you don't write "would of" instead of "would have" as I've seen lots of British teens do, I'm fine.

I still don't get how the word 'off' - essentialy a descriptive term [positional?] - suddenly morphs into a different sense [numerical] when relating to an event that is rare, or even oocurs only the once. However, I have been able to locate the variations 'one-off' and 'one off' in dictionaries - but never 'one of'. Still - I'm thinking that this is a fight I can't win and [in this case] must concede defeat and throw myself on the mercy of the court. (And few things in life give me more pleasure than being proved wrong by those guys! ).

While we're here and talking 'english', in the last week or so the Columbia University academic Professor John McWhorter suggested that the 'comma' had outstayed it's usefullness as a punctuation mark [largely being replaced by 'dashes' and brackets{of which I am currently guilty in this very sentance}] in the mainly 'screen' based writing of today. The general feeling in response to this seemed to be that there was no real reason to lament the demise of the comma, but it did prompt the following letter to 'The Times' from Joyce Mill of Claygate, Surrey.

You say we need not lament the decline of the comma? More than one expert in jurisprudence has noted the huge significance in the poet Geoffry Hill's line "To dispense, with justice; or, to dispense with justice" (from his sequence The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Peguy, 1983). The comma assures justice is done; lives are saved.

I've found that in engineering settings (like at my work) they tend to use it for any quantity: 1-off, 2-off, 30-off. The meaning does seem to come from "of". Still tends to be pronounced "off".

I'm Murrin wrote:I've found that in engineering settings (like at my work) they tend to use it for any quantity: 1-off, 2-off, 30-off. The meaning does seem to come from "of". Still tends to be pronounced "off".

I would GUESS...not going to try and find out...that those descend from [or from the same place as] "off-center" and 30 degrees "off-line" and such [it's funny though...relations between of and off. Is something out of kilter? or off-kilter? is there any difference? Out of balance/Off-balance.

And in a production line job I had, they numbered the "runs" that way.
[for instance, for a number of items the standard in/out was a gross...so if the order job was for 5 gross, it was 5-off.]

I always understood "one-off" to me something you do once, with the implication that you don't need to worry about doing it again. We use it in engineering a lot, when we discuss something that we need to make and then forget, as opposed to something we'd develop further.

Looking into it, it's a term that arises from printing. You set up your type and produce one sheet off of it. Or two-off, or ten-off, etc.

It is pronounced "off", and has no connection to "of". But it's a common enough confusion.

I would never use that term like you used in your lemon example.This is more how I would use it.

"Hey, that's a nice cabinet. Do you still have the plans?"
"No. This was a one-off. I didn't save anything."

Yeah, sorry, your family is right.

--A

Normally the case!