creeper/rando/sketchball + "off of" redux

[Ben Zimmer]

My latest On Language column draws on Connie Eble's UNC slang lists,
focusing on (female) students' terms for suspicious outsiders like
"creeper," "rando," and "sketchball":

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/magazine/31FOB-onlanguage-t.html

Also of potential interest is this quote from one of Connie's students:

---
“People have lost both their sense of communication and
social-interaction skills,” Kantarakias said. “We know only how to
judge people off of a Facebook page or we easily misinterpret texts or
e-mails."
---

We've had discussions in the past about "based off of" as a relatively
recent variant of "based on":

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0605E&L=ADS-L&P=R284

"Judge (someone) off of (something)" definitely seems like a related
development, with "off of" understood as 'on the basis of'/'based on'.

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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