Re: observable language change - "off of" makes it to the NY Times

On Aug 14, 11:11 pm, "benli...@xxxxxxxxxx" <benli...@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On 2008-08-12, Harlan Messinger wrote:
For crying out loud, do you think he made this up? From the OED:
?c1450 in G. Müller Aus mittelengl. Medizintexten (1929) 116 Take a
sponfull of {th}e licour..of of {th}e fyir and sette it in good place
tyl {th}at it be ny colde, soo as {th}ou mayst suffryn to holdyn
{th}er-in {th}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 {page}6, I could not keep my Eyes off of her.
I had no idea the expression had such a respectable pedigree. Maybe
I'll start using it in formal writing after all. :-)
Wiily S was only doing dialect when he used "off of".
Really? Would you care to provide evidence for this assertion? Or are
you just decreeing this to be so because it doesn't fit your theory?

Indeed, one has only to check the other lines spoken by
Saunder Simpcox to see that they are not dialect.

Something must have warned you that all is not kosher with this quote
(witness your "in any case" follow-up below)

From a fascinating source called the American Bibliopolist publsihed
in 1875:

start quote:

Theexpression " off of л thing," " he was getting off of his horse,"
etc., is often heard, and thought to be exceedingly vulgar. Yet
Shakespeare uses it in // Hen. VI, г, f. " Cardinal. What, art thou
lame ? Simpcox. Ay, God Almighty help me I Suffolk. How earnest thou
so ? Simpcox. A fall off of ъ tree. Wife. A plum-tree, master." It is
remarkable that this is the language of the First and second Folios ;
in the Third and Fourth " of " is omitted

end quote.

(This quote is somewhat distorted - "earnest" for "camest" etc.
because I am using the text version of the PDF doc)

If this is correct then OED, Haralan and Ross are guilty of
misinformation. It seems that even contemporaneously with
Shakespeare, there were attempts to edit this solecism out of his
texts.

Let's be clear about this accusation. OED cited "off of" occurring in
a particular Shakespeare passage published at a certain date. If you
want to go find a copy of the First Folio and check whether it's
really there, you're welcome, but until you do, accusing OED of
"misinformation" is just lunacy.

Harlan and I pointed to its occurrence in Shakespeare based on the OED
citation. What we said was correct. You are now trying to pretend that
we said "off of" occurred in every known variant of this play's text.
We didn't. It doesn't. There was no "misrepresentation", no "partial
truth". I'm reluctant to believe that even you are so naive as to have
taken our statements in that way.

Now you're suggesting we have an obligation to search the scholarly
literature and come up with a complete textual history of this
passage. (This is of course the most we could do -- there is no ms. in
Shakespeare's hand, no published edition seen through the printer by
him.) What on earth for? To prove your theory (or one of them)?

Just to steer back in the direction of the main point: Whether WS
actually wrote those words is _of no interest_ to anyone but you in
this discussion. I mentioned the early occurrences of "off of" only
because people of your type often like to pretend that the things they
disapprove of have just recently crawled out of a swamp somewhere. You
immediately asked about Shakespeare, and as it happened OED had this
citation, along with several by writers of less renown. But judging
usages according to whether they occur in Shakespeare is idiotic.

You have still given no rational basis for your belief that "off of"
is "dumb".

Ross Clark
.

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