When Did "One Off" Take Off?

[Iconoclast]

Yeah, I did. I guess it's hard to stick to the subject when you have no idea what the subject is and who's taking your side.
Nobody, who dissed one-off's late entry into the everyday language of everyday people, want to discuss it? Then I'm off to find that "one-off square compass".
PS I have a mind to just depart from the Land of square compasses and Mr Puddleduck's golden sock drawers because of my fellow combatants inability to stick to the subject and load their guns with proper ammo before popping off. That's why you don't fight with modern armies with 25% friendly-fire deaths.

Very good advice, Viscount L., and one I wish I had noted and adhered to myself way back when.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Okay, that seems like a fair comeback. That backs up the other Michael B's point.

But I still say, No. The British examples from prior to 1990 are largely from books on manufacturing, Hansard, and Glasgow newspapers. They would still represent a fraction of a fraction or .0000004% of British English books. And we're not talking fiction books. Again, the term only took off in fiction and therefore the popular print in 2000.




Unless you have specialized interests or knowledge or run with the right crowd, who would know this term in 1992? I was there in 1992. I read Shirley Harrison in 1993. I live in a Commonwealth country and I wouldn't know the term meant something unique or a one-shot deal unless Shirley Harrison explained it.

The other Michael B heard the term but he said he worked in a foundry. Caz knew the term, whenever she read the Diary book, and she said she had an uncle in a foundry who used the term. Why would they have to mention that if the term was popular?

Michael Barrett would have had to have specialized knowledge and then he probably would have had to coin the term "one off instance" himself. But he's a genius and a Liverpudlian. What can I say?

Hi Lombro,

Did I not disprove this statement when we discussed it on JTR Forums in May of last year?

I gave you a number of examples of "one off instance" in general usage prior to March 1992. For example:

"the work offers no challenge to the theory, but rather appears as a uniquely appropriate, one off instance for it." ("Women in the Poetry of T.S. Eliot" by Tony Pinkney, Macmillan, 1984)

"He does however admit that acts took place. They arose from playful antics within the home and it was certainly a one off instance. It is not going to happen again." (Aldershot News, 15 November 1985)

"She again followed him back home where Conway became abusive. Mr Alan Parsons for Conway said that the offences were one-off instances which happened because the dog had escaped the first time from a hole in an extension Conway was building" (Torbay Express and South Devon Echo, 12 February 1986)

"...when the police stopped them, and the visit to the 'shoot' which had apparently been in the glen for some five years was a one-off instance" (Portadown Times, 3 February 1989)

""We realise there has to be a security alarm and that it can go off at times," she said. "But this was not a one-off instance"" (Portadown Times, 24 January 1992)

None of these are Glasgow newspapers, although I don't know if you believe the Scots spoke a different language to the English during the 1980s who in turn spoke a different language to Members of Parliament.

And that's just "one off instance". If you searched for similar usage of "one off" such as "one off happening", "one off event", "one off mistake" etc. you'll easily find plenty in general circulation in newspapers in the 1970s.

We don't have searchable scripts from radio, TV and films from the 1960s onwards but you can be fairly sure that such expressions could be found on those mediums too.

The idea that this expression couldn't or wouldn't have been familiar to Michael Barrett in 1992, if that's what you're trying to argue, is unsustainable.

[Iconoclast]

The idea that this expression couldn't or wouldn't have been familiar to Michael Barrett in 1992, if that's what you're trying to argue, is unsustainable.

Samples of one are never strong samples, but I for one - aged 30 in 1992 - definitely knew of and used the concept of 'one-off 'event'' and was not even vaguely rattled or confused by it when I read it (one off instance) in James Maybrick's scrapbook in 1997 (Harrison, 1993).

(I was responding to other comments made by Lombro2 if anyone wonders why I did not state this earlier.)

[Lombro2]

This is the kind of thing that makes people throw a fit and have a hundred-off instance!

They can't seem to believe that Michael Barrett was smart enough to put a phrase together. He had to read every volume ever written past, present and future, and be spoon-fed.

[Lombro2]

Samples of one are never strong samples, but I for one - aged 30 in 1992 - definitely knew of and used the concept of 'one-off 'event'' and was not even vaguely rattled or confused by it when I read it (one off instance) in James Maybrick's scrapbook in 1997 (Harrison, 1993).

(I was responding to other comments made by Lombro2 if anyone wonders why I did not state this earlier.)

That's very nice of you to give us a gift. Or of retrofitting and regifting mine.

Now where would you have picked up the word or phrase--"one off"? Down at the pub?

[Iconoclast]

That's very nice of you to give us a gift. Or of retrofitting and regifting mine.
Now where would you have picked up the word or phrase--"one off"? Down at the pub?

Possibly at one of the three occasions I went to university, Lombro2. As an educated guy, I know lots of ‘big’ words. That said, I’ve just asked Mrs Iconoclast (who did not have the luxury of going to university) and she said she knew what ‘one-off’ meant from a very young age - she pinned it down to the late 1970s. I’m two years older than her and I’m pretty sure I knew the term earlier in the 1970s, but just to stay on your point, my final postgraduate course ended in - coincidentally - 1992, and I definitely knew what the term was by then.

Too be honest, I’m staggered you think it could be otherwise. I would expect everyone in the UK to know that term and exactly what it meant long long long before 1992.