creeper/rando/sketchball + "off of" redux

[Jonathan Lighter]

That should be "*and* we easily misinterpret...."

I don't know how to judge anyone "off of a Facebook page."  Does anybody?
Or do they just think they do?

(A voice in my head says, "Dude!  You can judge people in a movie or on TV,
right?" Must  shout down that voice!)

JL

On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 2:05 PM, Ben Zimmer
<bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      creeper/rando/sketchball + "off of" redux
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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/
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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