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?
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.
Not true! Alarms today snooze for nine minutes because of how those wind-up clocks functioned. See http://ask.yahoo.com/20041112.html.
Mr. Hill, unless you're the garbage truck's first stop, the garbage comes as well as goes...
But I'll check....
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....
We describe objects as flammable, inflammable or non-flammable. Seems like two words out to be enough - either it "flams" or it doesn't.
And if I move next Thursday's meeting back a day, what day is it moved to?
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.")
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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'
"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.
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"...
Wiktionary says "Pete" is a replacement for "Christ," but who's Pete?
Shot, shot down, shot up, all slightly different.
Get, get up, get around, etc..
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".
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."
"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.
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.