Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 November 26

= November 26 =

off of
Hi can someone explain the grammar in the (American) construct "off of"? For example, "get off of me" is very strange sounding to me. If "off" in that context means "away from (on top)", how can you say "get away from of me"? Surely the "of" is always redundant? Is there any example where the "of" makes sense? This has always bothered me and apart from the grammatical oddity, I can't even see the logic in it. It is becoming more commonly used and it doesn't even sound nice. Sandman30s (talk) 06:27, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * As an Australian English speaker, I feel pretty much the same. It seems a very ugly construction and I wince most times I hear it. It's sounds the kind of "lower class" expression my high school English teacher would have jumped on very aggressively. HiLo48 (talk) 06:47, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It strikes me as very odd too, I'm South African. Another American oddity that I always notice is "Where are you at?" - the "at" is redundant. Roger (talk) 06:54, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Good to know that others feel the same! Another pet hate is "laying down" instead of "lying down". Sandman30s (talk) 09:20, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Carrying that a little farther is "Where you at?" which manages to appear to be a full sentence despite lacking a verb. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:55, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Aren't "laying" and "lying" two different things? "Lay" is a transitive verb but "lie" is intransitive - you can "lay" something (dust, an egg, a baby into its crib, concrete, the basis of an argument) but subsequently the thing that is laid lies (pace Bob "lay, lady, lay" Dylan). Tonywalton Talk 00:55, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
 * "Now I lay me down to sleep / I pray the Lord my soul to keep / etc." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:57, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Exactly. There's nothing to prohibit the thing which is acted upon by a transitive verb being both subject and object of the verb. (add "me" to the list of "dust, an egg" and so on, in other words). Tonywalton Talk 01:27, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, but what some people say is "I'm going to lay down for a while", or "He was laying on the road, injured". Only the verb "lie" is correct there.  --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   20:21, 28 November 2010 (UTC)


 * It's no use trying to discredit idiomatic expressions by appeals to logic. Objectively, "off of" is no more redundant than "out of", which is obligatory except in a few very lower-class dialects: "Get out my way, girl." L ANTZY T ALK 07:52, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * These guys are not particularly American...—Emil J. 13:16, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * But they are singing in a distinctly American idiom. 87.114.101.69 (talk) 13:24, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Even if they are, that's no reason to take revenge on another user's CSS.—Emil J. 13:50, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * ? 87.114.101.69 (talk) 15:33, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * .—Emil J. 15:40, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see. Sorry about that – my browser does it automatically. 87.114.101.69 (talk) 16:25, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * "Get off of me" sounds fine to me - if anything, better than "get off me". DuncanHill (talk) 13:25, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Off of is everyday colloquial usage in the UK as well as the US. Don't take this badge off of me. I can't use it any more. (US) Probably something by Lily Allen, The Streets, Madness, The Smiths... for UK usage, but can't think what right now. Itsmejudith (talk) 14:11, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It certainly isn't American in origin. The first usages of it cited by the OED make that quite clear:
 * ?c1450 in G. Müller Aus mittelengl. Medizintexten (1929) 116 Take a sponfull of e licour..of of e fyir and sette it in good place tyl at it be ny colde, soo as ou mayst suffryn to holdyn er-in in hand. a1616 SHAKESPEARE Henry VI, Pt. 2 (1623) II. i. 98 A fall off of [1594 Falling off on] a Tree. 1667 A. MARVELL Corr. in Wks. (1875) II. 224 The Lords and we cannot yet get off of the difficultyes risen betwixt us. 1678 J. BUNYAN Pilgrim's Progress 49 About a furlong off of the Porters Lodge. 1712 R. STEELE Spectator No. 306. 6, I could not keep my Eyes off of her. 1720 D. DEFOE Mem. Cavalier 281, I had perswaded him off of that. 1748 S. RICHARDSON Clarissa V. xiii. 132 Biting my lip, [was to indicate] Get off of that, as fast as possible.
 * --Antiquary (talk) 20:44, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * It fits perfectly with the pattern of other directions - "get on top of me", "get north of me", "get one mile offshore of me". There's no problem with the logic of it. The word of is somewhat decorative and superfluous, but isn't it usually? 81.131.21.92 (talk) 14:47, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * It is a question of how speakers understand the syntactic construction. If they see "get off" as a single verbal complex then adding the of is natural. Just as it is with "get out" - "get out of my room". Its not a question about redundancy (all languages love and permit redundancy anyway - there is no kind of English or any other language that is redundancy free) - it is a question about how to understand the construction as using a phrasal verb or not.·Maunus· ƛ · 16:49, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Want to add even another adverb to the mix? "Get down off of the table" is a valid Americanism.  :)   Corvus cornix  talk  21:28, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * And normal in English English too, albeit colloquial and regarded as incorrect. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:55, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It seems to me that speakers of many varieties of English (certainly some UK ones) regularly substitute the compound preposition "off of" (or the fused form "offa") for the standard preposition "off", and that's all there is to it. --ColinFine (talk) 00:35, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It's not unrelated to how some people say things like "If he hadn't have done it, we'd be in big trouble now". The "have" is sometimes pronounced "of" and even often perceived and written that way, but whatever spelling is used, it's completely out of place formally, but it still works on a colloquial level by making the sentence easier to say, redolent as it is of "couldn't have (of)", "shouldn't have (of)" etc.  --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   06:21, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I have yet to meet someone who doesn't pronounce it as "of". Lexicografía (talk) 13:57, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Then I think you must be moving in the wrong circles. The people I mix with always correctly pronounce their grammatical errors. Nothing but the best for us, you know.  :)  --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   20:18, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The worst case might be when Dizzy Dean commented on how a particular batter should not have swung at a particular pitch, or as Diz said it, "He shouldn't hadn't oughta swang." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:20, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
 * We have an article on the phenomenon: English modal verb. Marnanel (talk) 14:27, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Happens all the time in Southern English. "I used-ta could". Lexicografía (talk) 13:57, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Wow, is Dizzy Dean's line the origin of a song I once heard, in which a woman tells why she left her mate? —Tamfang (talk) 19:10, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

scansion in virgil
How do I scan the following line from Virgil's Aeneid:

Navita quos jam inde ut Stygia prospexit ab unda ?

The problem occurs at the start of the line, because navita looks like one foot, then either quos iam would be the next, or quos iam in-. The first is long-short, so that shouldn't be a foot, and the alternative looks clearly like long-short-long, which is not a foot, and should be an impossible sequence anyway. If the sixth syllable in- could be made short somehow, there would be no problem, and the whole line would scan neatly, but I can't see how this can be done. Thanks as always, It&#39;s been emotional (talk) 08:49, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * ''Na-vi-ta|quos j(am)in-|d(e)ut Sty-gi|a pros|pe-xit ab| un-da. Notice the ellisions, happening also with nasalized vowels (am) in jam. Pallida  Mors  10:20, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

so you read it: ( - ^ ^) ( -   - ) ( -    ^ ^) (-  - ) ( -  ^  ^ ) (- ^ )                          (Navita) (quos jin) (dut Stygi) (a pro) (spexit ab) (unda) ? 92.230.69.163 (talk) 12:24, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, the short answer, yes. Surely the factual reading was more or less like ('quos jãin)(di'ut Stygi)('a pro)... so ellision matters more to counting than pronouncing; though fair enough, many people around here that know more than me about Latin prosody can give a more elaborate answer. :) Pallida  Mors  13:00, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The only thing I would add to this is a link to dactylic hexameter, but IBE already seems to know how to scan. (I always have the opposite problem, I remember the rules for elision but not scansion...)
 * I would point out that while you've scanned the last word (¯ ˘), which is fine because it's the last foot of the line, unda is in fact in the ablative singular (being the object of ab) and so is technically undā. Likewise, Stygia, which modifies it, is Stygiā: the ā is long by nature, not long by position since the consonant cluster after it is a stop + a liquid. —Angr (talk) 17:51, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks. Yes, I didn't know the rules for elision. I knew you elided final -m in the accusative in front of a vowel, but not that the same applied to words like iam. It&#39;s been emotional (talk) 15:07, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Meaning of "control" as a French word
In an old version of a Wikipedia article, it says "The word Control clearly provoked some misunderstanding by English-readers because its 1st meaning in French is "to check" and its 2nd meaning is "to have a grip over". And it is the other way round in English". http://www.thefullwiki.org/Henri_Fayol_and_the_Administrative_theory

Is this correct? Thanks 92.28.241.63 (talk) 12:53, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * It means inspection, checking, verification, making sure that everything is what it is claimed to be (often in an official way). It only really corresponds to English "control" in a fairly narrow technical sense (as in "quality control")... AnonMoos (talk) 13:34, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, is there anything I could cite so that the above can be replaced into the current article? 92.24.178.149 (talk) 21:43, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Why not look the French word up in a good-size "dead-tree" paper dictionary, and cite what you find there? I've done this a number of times for Arabic words in Wikipeda articles, based on the Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic... AnonMoos (talk) 22:11, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * In French it can also mean to have a grip over. E.g. "Le President ne controle pas le budget de l'etat, c'est la prerogative du Premier Ministre et du Ministre des Finances." but that is a rarer use of the word. Sorry I am using a querty keyboard and lazy with finding my diacritics. --Lgriot (talk) 16:17, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * In sports, a "check" is indeed a form of control, i.e. of impeding the one who's trying to advance the ball or the puck. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:28, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Looking at the EO entries for those two words, they are closely related in meaning. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:31, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * The same is true of German kontrollieren. -Elmer Clark (talk) 02:36, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

This - That - These - Those
As I understand, we use "this" for singular things close at hand (such "this keyboard"), "these" for the plural, "that" for things far away (such as "that mountain") and "those" for the plural. But which are the rules for conceptual objects, when distance does not apply? For example, ideas, events, circumstances, etc. MBelgrano (talk) 13:37, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm no expert, but in those cases, I would use "this idea/event/circumstance" or "these ideas/events/circumstances" unless I was differentiating between one idea/event/circumstance and others. I would probably say "I like this idea, but not that one".  Although, if I was pointing to select one of several items, I would use "that" instead of "this" for emphasis. --Thomprod (talk) 14:24, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * "Close at hand" is not always a matter of physical distance. The concept you've just been talking about is "this concept". Marnanel (talk) 14:56, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Sometimes -- it can also be "that concept", especially if you disagree with it. By using "that", you put yourself at a metaphorical distance from it.  "My opponent claims that the sky is blue.  That concept is valid less than half the time."  --Anonymous, 00:00 UTC, November 27, 2010.


 * I would also use this and that for two equal options, like "which car do you like best, this one or that one?". -- Q Chris (talk)
 * There is always the distance in the text, which in this case is sometimes used. The last mentioned idea is "closer", and can be "this idea", whereas the first mentionned idea is further in the text, in which case it can be "that idea". --Lgriot (talk) 16:22, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

The girl's name Perri
Does anyone happen to know what the girl's name Perri is short for? Could it be a diminutive for Peregrine perhaps? Thank you.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 17:53, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Maybe a feminization of Perry, as they do with Terry/Terri? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:16, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Googling [name origin perri] led to a number of items, including this one which says it derives from "Peter". I saw another site that said it actually derives from "Pierre", which makes more sense. "Petra" is another feminized version of "Peter", only with an eastern European flavor. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:25, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, Peri (and that's an article in need in improvement) in Dr Who was short for Perpugilliam. But that was a but odd. 109.155.42.156 (talk) 20:48, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * As a full name (not a shortened nickname) under that spelling, "Peri" is likely to come from the Persian-language word which is the counterpart to Arabic "Houri" (see Wikipedia article Peri), by means of the poem Lalla-Rookh or a similar literary source. Not sure about "Perri"... AnonMoos (talk) 21:56, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Or, as with Peri Gilpin, who was "reportedly named after the squirrel "Perri" from a Disney True Life Adventures documentary." (According to IMDB trivia which is perhaps not the best source...) Adam Bishop (talk) 02:34, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

terminological inexactitude
what date was the phrase first used? Kittybrewster  &#9742;  18:21, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Terminological inexactitude says 1906. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 20:04, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh. Stupid of me. I didn't think of it possibly being in wikipedia. Thank you. Kittybrewster  &#9742;  20:15, 26 November 2010 (UTC)