When Did "One Off" Take Off?

[John Wheat]

To be clear, dear readers, the scrapbook has no provenance yet because its origins remain unconfirmed.

There are claims and counter-claims, evidence which might answer the question, and testimonies which thoroughly contradict one another.

What we do not yet have is the proven provenance.

A load of rubbish. I stand by what I've said.

[Iconoclast]

Doesn't the Diary's provenance make it 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999 per cent likely that it's a hoax?

To be clear, dear readers, the scrapbook has no provenance yet because its origins remain unconfirmed.

There are claims and counter-claims, evidence which might answer the question, and testimonies which thoroughly contradict one another.

What we do not yet have is the proven provenance.

[John Wheat]

Here's a wider timeline based on British sources.



So using the term makes it very likely, but not certain, that the diary was a hoax.

Doesn't the Diary's provenance make it 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999 per cent likely that it's a hoax?

[Fiver]

This question seems to have caused some displeasure resulting in some censure.

Unfortunately, I was unable to read what was said so I'll put the question here with the appropriate Google Ngram.


When did "One Off" take off?

Here's a wider timeline based on British sources.



So using the term makes it very likely, but not certain, that the diary was a hoax.

[Iconoclast]

Not in the context of the expression "one-off", however.

What a shame Maybrick didn't write 'one-off', then, I'd say.

[Sam Flynn]

And "off" can also has the sense of "aberrant".

Not in the context of the expression "one-off", however. The fact that something odd can be said to be "off" is a different usage, and any resemblance is coincidental.

[Iconoclast]

Michael Barrett would have had to have used "one off" for aberrant to describe the event just like in the sports article above. Unless he was thinking of a serial-killer-husband who thinks punching his wife is something "unique" that came off the production line. That's some deep, sinister, psychopathic thinking.

The aberrant usage is "unique" though. I've only seen it in these couple of examples. And "off" can also has the sense of "aberrant".

I have made this point before. Maybrick does not use the hyphen (mind, he never does) and that leaves a huge ambiguity around what he meant. Did he mean 'a one-off instance' or did he mean 'a one 'off' instance' (i.e., aberrant and not to be repeated)?

We have to bear in mind the context: he was presumably writing 'from fresh' in his mind and therefore he was exposed to linguistic inexactitude and error just as we are when we write or type. He didn't have the advantage of the back-space key or Tipp-Ex and he may not have cared if his statement was not good English. 'A one' is a tautology but it is commonly used in the north-east of England (my own mum used it all the time). I can't comment on those southerners down in Liverpool but it is possible that they also used the expression 'a one' where 'a' or 'one' would have sufficed. Maybrick may well have then felt 'off' was the best way to describe his aberrant behaviour, and then 'instance' is kinder to himself and his ego than, say, 'brutality' or whatever. Thus, we get 'a one off instance' and we think we've found an anachronism which kills the scrapbook dead in its tracks, when we may not have done so.

We have to be so careful that we can be certain that we are right when we seek to turn the ambiguous into the categorical because it suits us to do so.

[Lombro2]

Michael Barrett would have had to have used "one off" for aberrant to describe the event just like in the sports article above. Unless he was thinking of a serial-killer-husband who thinks punching his wife is something "unique" that came off the production line. That's some deep, sinister, psychopathic thinking.

The aberrant usage is "unique" though. I've only seen it in these couple of examples. And "off" can also has the sense of "aberrant".

[Sam Flynn]

Then the term "one-off" was used to describe abstract as well as physical objects.

Slight correction - it became an expression used to describe abstract objects at some point in time. Arguably, the diary takes it one step further, and uses "one-off" to describe, not an object, but a unique event.

[Iconoclast]

Mayhem back then meant physical injury. It only took on its present meanting of "chaos/disorder" in the latter half of the 20th century, and it is in this sense that the diary author(s) used it.

May comes and goes
In the dark of the night
he kisses the whores
then gives them a fright
With a ring on my finger
and a knife in my hand
This May spreads Mayhem
all through the land
throughout this fair land.

----

With a ring on my finger
and a knife in my hand
This May spreads Mayhem
throughout this fair land.

What does Maybrick mean by 'spreads Mayhem'? Note, he uses the word twice in his scrapbook and on both occasions (they are linked, obviously) he capitalises 'mayhem' because he is playing around with the 'May' in 'Maybrick'. He wants a word he can 'own' which conveys danger, threat, terror This was as a direct result of seeing the line in Punch magazine, 'Turn around three times and catch whom you may' which tickled him immensely for obvious reasons.

I don't think we need to dig any deeper than this. If it is true (and I don't think this has ever actually been established) that 'mayhem' to Maybrick must have meant 'physical injury', there is nothing stopping him from using the word in the context he did in order to get the first three letters of his surname into his doggerel. The issue is not that he did so but that he implied this 'Mayhem' would be spread throughout the land which makes his 'Mayhem' sound far more like the modern use of 'mayhem' (to cause chaos and panic).

I would be the first to agree that this would be highly prescient of him if 'mayhem' up to that point had never - in any context - meant anything other than 'physical injury' but we have seen coincidences in this case pile up one on top of the other so we need more information on the truth of the range of use of 'mayhem' in Victorian times before we can categorically exclude its use (bar outlandish coincidence) by James Maybrick in his murder scrapbook.

On a pedantic note, Maybrick did claim to have committed a murder in Manchester as a trial run for his Whitechapel crimes so it is not beyond the realms of possibility that he was, indeed, using the word to mean 'physical injury' which only he knew he had 'spread ... throughout this fair land'.

[Iconoclast]

I should explain the "one off" question fairly and simply.

Viscount L., you are about 13.8 billion light years behind Lord Orsam on this. I wouldn't try schooling anyone on 'one-off' whilst it is not illegal for him to have his own website.

[Lombro2]

I should explain the "one off" question fairly and simply.


One-off, two-off, three-off etc. originated as production terms for quantities of items produced that may or may not be unique.

In the 40s, "one-off" began to be used in print to describe something unique. It didn't mean one item necessarily. It could be a one-off person, or it could be a one-off car and they made hundreds of them. Obviously, he picked the term "one-off" and not "a hundred off".

Then the term "one-off" was used to describe abstract as well as physical objects.


Here is an example of how term "one off" is used or misused today from an article just last week. It's used like in the diary to refer to an aberration rather than something "unique" but it adds "unusual" as an adjective.




Matthews, Marner finish with worst plus-minus by any Leafs player since 1991-92

[Sam Flynn]

"One off" took off in 2000.

So the question is, Why did this fact cause my fellow debunkers so much vexation, to the point of spreading "mayhem" in the sense Edgar Rice Burroughs used it in Tarzan of the Apes in 1912?

Mayhem back then meant physical injury. It only took on its present meanting of "chaos/disorder" in the latter half of the 20th century, and it is in this sense that the diary author(s) used it.

[Lombro2]

"One off" took off in 2000.

So the question is, Why did this fact cause my fellow debunkers so much vexation, to the point of spreading "mayhem" in the sense Edgar Rice Burroughs used it in Tarzan of the Apes in 1912?

[Iconoclast]

One of my favourites too. Looks like 'spreading mayhem' has never been popularly recorded in the books sampled by Google Ngrams (which the Viscount L. has shown escalated rapidly in the 20th century, somewhat biasing against the 19th century).