One-off

[Kym]

Can somebody please help me??? I do not understand why, if there is only one of something, we write that that something is a "one-off". There is only ONE OF it ... it is very annoying!!!

[Heather]

Maybe it refers to one off the rack, one off the page, that type of one off - just thinking out loud here. What ya reckon?

[Heather]

This coming from someone who enjoys toilet humour!

[Zondrae]

Kym,

It is a manufacturing term. It usually means not only that there is only one but also there will not be any more made.

[Kym]

Thanks Heather and Zondrae. I used "one of" in my newspaper story about the Texas Longhorn stud near Charters Towers (Qld), saying it was "a one of outback adventure" because it is unique and one OF a kind ... but the newspaper editor changed it to a "one-off adventure". A Texas Longhorn farmstay adventure is definitely not an item off the rack! Never mind, the earth won't stop revolving because of my dilemma, will it? I was just trying to understand why the "off" part?????

Still dunno ...

K.

[Bob Pacey]

In that context Kym it means that the experience is something you will not get elsewhere.


Still fits

Cheers Bob

[r.magnay]

G'day Kym,
I get the Tom Tits with that too! Although I know the editor has it right, I can never work out why we are meant to write it that way either!......just have to learn to live with it I s'pose.

[Kym]

Hi Bob and Ross, yes I know it's right, but I'm trying to figure out WHY? Did someone, way back in the dark ages just make a typo and stuck an extra F in there, and everyone since has just assumed it was right and stuck with it??? And you're right Ross, there's nothing I can do to change it even though it's stoopid. Just shrug and walk away. Next time, I'll just think of a different word. That'll trick 'em!

[keats]

Who are we to argue with history?

This began as a British expression but is now widely known in the US and elsewhere.
It comes out of manufacturing, in which off has long been used to mark a number of items to be produced of one kind: 20-off, 500-off. This seems to have begun in foundry work, or a similar trade, in which items were cast off a mould or from a pattern (“We’ll have 20 off that pattern and 500 off that other one”.) An example is in a book of 1947 by James Crowther and Richard Whiddington, Science at War: “Manufacturers found it very difficult to give up mass production, in order to make the 200 or so sets ‘off’.”
A one-off was just a single item, used in particular to refer to a prototype. The first known example appeared in the Proceedings of the Institute of British Foundrymen in 1934: “A splendid one-off pattern can be swept up in very little time.” (The reference is to a casting mould formed in sand.)

[Bob Pacey]

Yeah Keats found this little bit when searching mght be of interest.

The off in one-off does not, in fact, stem from some corruption of the word of. Rather, this British usage of off typically appears with a number to indicate a quantity of items produced in some manufacturing process. The Oxford English Dictionary, Safire notes, takes this back to a 1934 quotation from the Proceedings of the Institute of British Foundrymen: "A splendid one-off pattern can be swept up in a very little time." Other numbers can fit the bill, as in the O.E.D.'s 1973 example of an advertisement for "Kienzle printers, 6 off, surplus to manufacturing requirements."

Cheers Bob