The Volokh Conspiracy
[Eugene Volokh, November 3, 2006 at 1:08pm] Trackbacks
The Alarm Went Off:

A friend of mine asked me about this -- why do we say "the alarm went off" when the alarm, or at least the sound, goes on?

I infer that this is related to a gun or a bomb going off, that when something is ready to go it is somehow seen as "on," and then when the trigger turns that readiness into actual firing or detonation the device is seen as "going off." But can anyone tell me more precisely how the phrases came to be this way?

Jim from WA (mail):
Perhaps it started back in the days of wind up alarm clocks. Those had no snooze buttons; once the alarm rang, it was off.
11.3.2006 1:18pm
JRL:
I hope that the answer will solve the same mystery for the phrase "taking a dump."
11.3.2006 1:20pm
K Bennight (mail):
A question akin to why do "slow down" and "slow up" mean the same thing.
11.3.2006 1:25pm
Freddy Hill (mail):
And why does my wife say that "the garbage comes tomorrow" when in reality the garbage leaves tomorrow? And why do I understand what she means?
11.3.2006 1:32pm
lucia (mail) (www):
Remember the old mechanical alarm clocks? There was a little beater that toggled back and forth hitting two bells creating noise. I think the little beater was normally held still. Then, if the lever holding it still was pulled away (or off) the alarm sounded. This could be pulled away manually or automatically.

To stop the sound, you re-engaged the little lever- or put the holder back "on" manually.

So, the alarm sounds when the "holder" bit is "off". (That is, if I remember correctly.)

Of course, this is English language idiom. The real answer is just as likely a complete mystery.
11.3.2006 1:54pm
Colin (mail):
Perhaps it started back in the days of wind up alarm clocks. Those had no snooze buttons; once the alarm rang, it was off.

Not true! Alarms today snooze for nine minutes because of how those wind-up clocks functioned. See http://ask.yahoo.com/20041112.html.
11.3.2006 1:59pm
anonVCfan:
drive on a parkway, park in a driveway... JRL and K Bennight beat me to the other 2 I was thinking of.

Mr. Hill, unless you're the garbage truck's first stop, the garbage comes as well as goes...
11.3.2006 1:59pm
John Burgess (mail) (www):
I think the phrase predates alarm clocks... think cannons.

But I'll check....
11.3.2006 1:59pm
Brooks Lyman (mail):
Also, in firearms, the hammer or firing pin is held back "on" the sear; when the trigger is pulled, the sear is moved so that the hammer or firing pin comes "off" the sear.

Semi-related question: we have dictionaries of individual words and encyclopedias of various subjects; is there a dictionary of common (and not so common, please) phrases and expressions? Preferably including all those French and Latin phrases which one seems to have to learn by osmosis. Online would be nice, but I'm not averse to buying books....
11.3.2006 2:06pm
Connie (mail):
And when you want your house cooler in the summer do you turn the air conditioning UP or DOWN?
11.3.2006 2:22pm
OrinKerr:
Just speculation, but I'll go with Brooks' speculation. Things that are set to react when a trigger is pulled generally are released from tension, and thus go "off" when triggered.
11.3.2006 2:22pm
RI Lawyer:
Another, courtesy of George Carlin:

We describe objects as flammable, inflammable or non-flammable. Seems like two words out to be enough - either it "flams" or it doesn't.
11.3.2006 2:26pm
Mahlon:
For the same reason our feet smell and our noses run. I suggest a book by Richard Lederer called Crazy English. It explores many of the quirks of the language. This is but one reason why English, while endlessly descriptive, is also endlessly confusing.
11.3.2006 2:59pm
Tinhorn (mail):

And when you want your house cooler in the summer do you turn the air conditioning UP or DOWN?

And if I move next Thursday's meeting back a day, what day is it moved to?
11.3.2006 3:07pm
Gary McGath (www):
In German, you hang a phone down, not up. That actually makes sense to me.
11.3.2006 3:09pm
Anderson (mail) (www):
I recall that when I was trying to learn French, the prepositions gave me the worst fits (okay, 2d-worst after the subjunctive).

Our "prepositional geography" makes no sense, and neither, I suspect, does that of any other language. (Tho I recall that Einstein liked Latin in school b/c it was "logical.")
11.3.2006 3:32pm
Joe Zwers (mail):
"Go off" originally had the meaning of explode, and then to make a loud noise. Alarm clocks came much later, but fall into the loud noise category.
11.3.2006 3:52pm
Dell Adams (mail):
But what's the connection between "go off" and "explode"? I can only think that when a bomb explodes, it isn't there anymore: it goes away. "Go off" does suggest going to someplace else, which the bomb doesn't do (at least not to one place), but then, "go away" suggests the same thing.
11.3.2006 4:05pm
CrosbyBird:
In German, you hang a phone down, not up. That actually makes sense to me.

I think looking at old style phones makes "hang up" more appropriate. After all, you were putting the receiver on the elevated hook. Hanging down sort of reminds me of what you'd do if you just dropped it and the cord wasn't long enough to reach the floor.

A lot of amusing (when you think about it) phrases are really just shorthand that evolved over time. The ones I especially like are places where we say precisely the opposite of what we mean.

Why, when we are smitten with someone, do we say "head over heels," when that's the normal state of affairs? It seems like we'd be more accurately in a non-standard orientation, or "heels over head." Or, in baseball, the hit-and-run play, which is more precisely a run-and-hit play. Sometimes it's just plain laziness; I know a lot of people who realize they are saying the opposite of what they mean, but they could care less, I guess.
11.3.2006 4:09pm
JBL:
Aaand they're off...

We go off on tangents, off to the races, off our rockers.

We go on a journey, because the journey is over there, not here. From here, we set off.

If I say "The alarm is on," I usually mean that it is set, not that it is triggered. It is on duty. It is watching but not moving. When it stops watching and starts moving, it goes off.

When I want it colder, I turn the thermostat (or temperature) down and the air conditioner (or fan) up. The confusion is not with the prepositions, but results from the use of one element of the system to refer to the whole, or vice versa, which is a different grammatical concept entirely. Just like it's hard to tell whether the garbage comes or goes if you're using "garbage" to refer to the trash, or the truck, or the process, or some combination.

Most places I spend my time are not particularly suitable for disposing of dumps. So if I have one, I usually take it somewhere that is. Sort of like "taking your kids to school" usually also means leaving them there. Or something.
11.3.2006 4:13pm
A. Zarkov (mail):
What about jack off?
11.3.2006 4:25pm
marty:
Another ambiguity wrt alarms (burglar alarms, not alarm clocks), as mentioned above, is the meaning of the alarm being "on" ("set"? or sounding?) or of turning it "off" (disabling it so you can open a door, or silencing the siren?)

Alarm guys, (uv which I used to be one in a previous life) quickly learn to use the terms "arm" and "disarm" for setting or disabling the system, and the verb "silence" for making it stop.. uh, stop.. you know, "going off".
11.3.2006 4:37pm
dan (mail):
Maybe your friend has the question backwards. I think English speakers have long used "gone off" or "set off" to describe things that have been set in motion. We say "they're off" at the racetrack. Or "I'm off" on a trip. The fireworks have been "set off." Applying this word to an alarm clock generalizes the concept to anything that is tripped or triggered, even where forward motion isn't involved.

But when did we start to say that something that was operating was "on?" That seems to me to be a more recent and less intuitive usage. We say "the light is on" or "the electricity is on," but what are they on? What is under them? We should all remember that the only thing on the telly is a penguin.
11.3.2006 4:49pm
BobH (mail):
CrosbyBird notes, "in baseball, the hit-and-run play, which is more precisely a run-and-hit play."

Baseball has both the hit-and-run play AND the run-and-hit play. In the former, the baserunner runs and the batsman is obligated to swing and (in the best of all possible worlds) make contact with the ball; in the latter, the swing (and, one hopes, contact) is optional.
11.3.2006 5:02pm
speedwell (mail):
And when you've left something too long in the refigerator, and it "goes off," what exactly does it go off of?
11.3.2006 5:13pm
Jay Myers:
Brooks Lyman:

Also, in firearms, the hammer or firing pin is held back "on" the sear; when the trigger is pulled, the sear is moved so that the hammer or firing pin comes "off" the sear.

Ah, that must explain it. The phrase "go off at half cocked" originated in the early ninteenth century but I could never figure out how "off" in its original sense of "away, from" would have applied. I'm not sure how it went from that to "sounding off" in the sense of sailors calling out the depth of water but it would seem that the "sounding" and the "off" in that process were conflated until to "sound off" meant to speak. It's only a short step from people "sounding off" to noisy devices "going off".

"Off" didn't take on the meaning "not working" until the late nineteenth century.


Semi-related question: we have dictionaries of individual words and encyclopedias of various subjects; is there a dictionary of common (and not so common, please) phrases and expressions? Preferably including all those French and Latin phrases which one seems to have to learn by osmosis. Online would be nice, but I'm not averse to buying books....

There are plenty on the web.

English phrases 1

English phrases 2

Latin phrases 1

Latin phrases 2

Latin phrases 3

French phrases 1

French phrases 2

Essential French phrase: Ce restaurant n'est pas aussi bon que le Mc.Donalds'
11.3.2006 5:16pm
Malvolio:
The very first meaning of "off" in Webster's is "from a place or position" (e.g., "march off"). An alarm is "going off" in a similar way that a traveler "sets off".

"Off" in the sense of "de-activated" is probably quite new. Otherwise automatic machines that are easily activated and de-activated have become common only in the last few (hundred) years.
11.3.2006 6:21pm
Mark Draughn (mail) (www):
"We describe objects as flammable, inflammable or non-flammable."

Something that can catch fire is inflammable. If it won't catch fire, it's non-inflammable. If you have a big tank of inflammable stuff and you want to put up a warning sign for people who might get confused by the "in-" prefix (most of us) you paint "FLAMMABLE" on the sign.

I wonder why things "catch fire"...
11.3.2006 7:25pm
kempermanx (mail):
The Alarm goes off probably is from the fact that early fire alarms in cities were of the open the box hit plate break glass type. This alarm then sent a signal to the fire station that printed out a paper strip with a code of the alarm location. Once the alarm was set off, it had to me manually reset before it would work again. I can not believe I am old enough to know this stuff. So when the alarm went off, it was off, that is it would not work again until reset. In the 40's students at NC State set off all the alarms in Raleigh because the fire Marshall closed down a UNC-NC State Basketball game. Every alarm in the city had to be reset, manually.
11.3.2006 8:39pm
Fearmonger (mail):
What about, "For Pete's Sake!"

Wiktionary says "Pete" is a replacement for "Christ," but who's Pete?
11.3.2006 8:49pm
Lev:
What about "meteroric rise"? Meteors don't rise, they fall, ending up in cinders or a big splat.
11.3.2006 10:38pm
Dave Hardy (mail) (www):
English is largely a germanic tonque, and German verbs use suffixes to vary the meaning. In English, the suffix is often split off into a separate word (often after the direct object). And it's sometimes arbitary.

Shot, shot down, shot up, all slightly different.

Get, get up, get around, etc..
11.3.2006 10:51pm
htom (mail):
How did a quantum change become large?
11.4.2006 7:45am
sealionii (mail):

What about, "For Pete's Sake!"

Wiktionary says "Pete" is a replacement for "Christ," but who's Pete?


I'm pretty sure this is a reference to St. Peter.

WRT quantum changes--I would guess that this originally meant something along the lines of "night and day"--a complete reversal (spin up to spin down in an electron or what have you) and that it just bled into "a big change".
11.4.2006 11:58am
JerryW (mail):
When you are driving what happens when you put the top down?
11.4.2006 12:03pm
Guest!:
A Jeopardy clue from the other day stated that the phrase "No love lost" originally meant that two people liked each other very much. Now it means the opposite.

I've also never liked the current expression "Have your cake and eat it too," and I often use the inverted (and probably original) phrasing "Eat your cake and have it too."
11.4.2006 12:13pm
RichC:
What about meteoric rise?

"Meteoric rise" is usually (or at least was) used in the context of a spectacular rise followed by an equally fall or fading away -- just like a meteor.

The person bursts onto the stage out of nowhere, shines brightly for a short time, then disappears into oblivion.
11.4.2006 9:31pm
Jay Myers:
htom:

How did a quantum change become large?

The word quantum isn't actually a measure of scale. It indicates that you are dealing with irreducable units of measure (a quanta) so that any state change is an instant change from one state to a significantly different state with no intermediary states or steps.

The general expression implies that things were one way and then all of a sudden they were very different with no gradiation or intermediate stages.
11.5.2006 10:04am

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