Why do you say off of?

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jigokubi@reddit

Presumably, we speak a different dialect of English than you.

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If you’re looking for serious answers, the better sub would be r/English, r/Englishlearning, or r/grammar. You can specify that you’re asking about American English, if that’s what you’re interested in. Otherwise you will get a mix of British, Australian, NZ, Canadian, and American answers. You’re getting hostile responses of because many parts of the internet mock Americans for being poorly educated or speaking poor English. So many are viewing this as a not in good faith question. “Why do you (stupid) people use this word that is redundant?”

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Chicago_Avocado@reddit

Off. (assumes christlike pose and waits to be down voted to oblivion)

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Knea_Grows@reddit

In America, if you say "get this guy off" it has a very different meaning. People will look at you funny 🤣

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ND7020@reddit

I don’t, personally.

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GreenBeanTM@reddit

Just because you dislike it doesn’t mean it’s grammatically incorrect.

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ND7020@reddit

It is incorrect, sorry

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GreenBeanTM@reddit

No, it’s not.

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Upstairs-Storm1006@reddit

Yeah I'm pretty sure Mick Jagger is British

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ShipComprehensive543@reddit

Damn, not you bring up the clouds!!😭

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Enough-Moose-5816@reddit

YouTube says he’s Swedish

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Terminator7786@reddit

Can you give an example?

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Tommy_Wisseau_burner@reddit

Get off of me

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lky830@reddit

Probably something like “the book is hanging off of the table”. And they’re right, it IS grammatically redundant. Why do we do it? 🤷🏼‍♀️

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shelwood46@reddit

I dunno, but I will stop doing it if Brits will stop saying "he keeps himself to himself" instead of merely "he keeps to himself". Drives me batty.

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Syandris@reddit

Same reason they un-thaw things in the Midwest. No one knows, or cares. Although it is fun to talk backwards on purpose.

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creatyvechaos@reddit

Societial rhythmic flow often presides over presumed grammatical expectations of a language. As long as the message is understood, it really doesn't matter. It's like asking what the difference is between "yall" and "you all." The former heils from a specific demographic that bled into others. They mean the same thing.

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sideburniusmaximus@reddit

Get off of my mom!!

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Acceptable_Tea3608@reddit

Get off my sister!

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ShipComprehensive543@reddit

She **jumped out of** the window. She **jumped out** the window.

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CalmRip@reddit

That second construct sets every single one of my ex-editor's teeth to grinding.

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SubUrbanMess2021@reddit

She jumped off of the window. Duh.

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ShipComprehensive543@reddit

ah damn, I stand corrected, but at least I was able to share yet another example, right?

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Otherwise-OhWell@reddit

Life was fun Life was great Til I made my big mistake Oh no it'll never happen to me

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WideHuckleberry1@reddit

The internet is something I want to get this guy off of.

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Lezlord-69@reddit

“I want to get this guy off of” = I want him out of here. “I want to get this guy off” = something very different

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WideHuckleberry1@reddit

I'm going to pretend like that was intentional because it still technically provides an example of why we'd use "off of" instead of "off."

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Lezlord-69@reddit

Issa joke

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cranberry_spike@reddit

Very true!

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Such_Mortgage_1916@reddit

Totally appropriate answer

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TangyMarimba13@reddit

but then you're using a preposition to end a sentence with. 😃

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tcrhs@reddit

Thanks for the laugh!

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devnullopinions@reddit

Spoken language isn’t dictated by written rules and is always changing. This is no logical reason why any spoken language dialect adopts any particular words or phrases. For example, why say “completely redundant” when the “completely” is, well, redundant.

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introspectiveliar@reddit

Because for some reason we delight in being redundant. That’s just how we roll. For a long time “…off of”, “… go to”, and “…it at” drove me crazy. I was sure my 8th grade English Grammar teacher rolled over in her grave every-time I heard it. Eventually I learned to just ignore it.

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Bitter_Ad8768@reddit

Why do Bogans say "youse" instead of "you" or "yall?"

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SituationSecure4650@reddit (OP)

What’s a bogan?

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JimBones31@reddit

A vogan is a buerocratic alien from Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy.

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Bitter_Ad8768@reddit

Australian redneck.

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opheliainwaders@reddit

Ok serious answer is that sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't, and it's related to the cadence of the sentence I'm speaking and whether I need a "grace note," so to speak, between "off" and whatever comes next. That said, if I add the "of," it's coming out as "offa," not "off of."

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chardeemacdennisbird@reddit

Guess I never really thought of it. Just something that's off of the top my head most time.

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KittenPurrs@reddit

After my sister moved out state and into a metro area, she asked if I ever noticed how many prepositions/prepositional phrases people in our hometown would string together. One of the specific examples I remember her mentioning was "Can you grab the bottle of aspirin from up on top of the fridge for me?"

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opheliainwaders@reddit

I...just realized that is how I would say that, lol.

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bonir_hunter@reddit

why do you say thought of. The of is redundant. Why can’t you just say thought it?

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chardeemacdennisbird@reddit

I'm starting to question everything I was taught of in school.

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HeyPurityItsMeAgain@reddit

It's grammatically incorrect. People say it anyway.

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Seven_Seat@reddit

Why use many word when few word do trick?

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Such_Mortgage_1916@reddit

If I was to say jump off that it just doesn't sound right. If I say jump off of that it sounds correct

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stiletto929@reddit

And this is how native speakers learn things. We don’t know why - we just know, “Does this sound right or wrong?” :)

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danhm@reddit

English has something called [phrasal verbs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_phrasal_verbs) which are often followed with a preposition. The off is essentially treated like a suffix to the primary verb (*get* off of, *cool* off with, etc)

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stiletto929@reddit

This person Englishes. ;)

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baalroo@reddit

> The of is completely redundant I just want to make sure people notice this but here. "Completely" is redundant in this sentence.

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stiletto929@reddit

Cause English is weird? That’s what I used to tell my kids when they would question weird spellings or pronunciations. Also “English jumped other languages in dark alleys and stole their loose grammar.” But here’s the thing - native speakers of a language often can’t tell you WHY something is done. Just that it is. Someone who teaches English as a 2nd language might be able to actually answer your question. The rest of us just have jokes and, “It just is.”

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tdail2011@reddit

It's short for "up off of."

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DigitalMonsoon@reddit

We say both. You can say: Step *off* the platform. or Step *off of* the platform. Both are grammatically correct and can be used interchangeably. Using *of* mimics other saying commonly used in English like "get *out of* the car" or "move away from the dog". There are some historical contexts that we could go into but I think the best way to describe it is that English isn't one language, it is three languages in a trench coat pretending to be one language.

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SituationSecure4650@reddit (OP)

Interesting. What are the 3 languages in the coat? Thanks for having a real conversation about the question asked.

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DigitalMonsoon@reddit

Latin, Germanic and French are the main contributors. It's basically a history of the people who conquered the British Isles. Those being Romans, Angles from Western Germany, and the Normans from northern France.

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FunTricky903@reddit

To upset you and you specifically.

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SituationSecure4650@reddit (OP)

I just asked a question? It seems the commenting Americans are the one who’re upset.

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cranberry_spike@reddit

It's a joke

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M1ndS0uP@reddit

Hes joking with you my friend.

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Vulpix_lover@reddit

Because it pisses off people like you

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RantsOfBrian@reddit

Ahem… “pisses off OF people like you”

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FREDICVSMAXIMVS@reddit

Well, there's a great example right there! "Pisses off people like you" means it makes them angry. "Pisses off *of* people like you" implies that something is standing on you and urinating. (Probably into the wind)

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Prestigious-Dog-2150@reddit

(1) "I am" is redundant. ("Am" can't go with any other pronoun.) (2) "Ouch! You stepped on my foot." ("My"is redundant, because I wouldn't have felt it if it had been someone else's foot.) (3) She ran into the house. ("In the house" works as well, and you've saved all that time by not saying "to.") As someone else pointed out, spoken language is redundant, because humans are lousy listeners.

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CDA_CPA@reddit

I’m southern. We say a lot of stuff that doesn’t make sense to others.

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FREDICVSMAXIMVS@reddit

Like "cut the lights on" 😄

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HonestLemon25@reddit

“Git the dawg offa the couch” was one I remember vividly from my grandmother many times as a kid

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atomicitalian@reddit

you didn't need to include "completely" in your sentence. and yet you did. maybe sometimes language is just weird and people just say things because they do and you need to get over it.

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nuggets_attack@reddit

Americans are constitutionally required to have a certain ratio of schwa sounds per number of syllables in a sentence. Tacking on that extra "of" is just a free schwa sound.

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xxxjessicann00xxx@reddit

And we love free shit

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wormbreath@reddit

I assume I will arrested if I don’t. It’s not something i wanna get off of doing.

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CJK5Hookers@reddit

Why do you say completely redundant? Why can’t you just say redundant?

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TangyMarimba13@reddit

maybe it's only partially redundant 😃

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ShipComprehensive543@reddit

🤣🤣🤣🤣😭😭😭😭

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Weaselpuss@reddit

Getting someone off is sexual. Getting somebody off of of something is usually not.

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ALoungerAtTheClubs@reddit

Why do the French ignore half the letters in their words? It's just a convention that developed over time.

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AllPeopleAreStupid@reddit

Because we love ending our sentences with prepositions instead of leaving them off of.

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Hammer_of_Shawn@reddit

Because it really isn't a big deal at all.

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tcrhs@reddit

I say it to deliberately piss off strangers on Reddit.

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Emotional-Ocelot-309@reddit

Piss off of strangers

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Deep_Contribution552@reddit

Better ask this in r/asklinguistics

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LizaBlue4U@reddit

You might want to ask in r/grammar They’re great with these questions.

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JimPlath@reddit

Not all of us do. Why do you ascribe a minor detail about some specific person to an entire group?

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OpposumMyPossum@reddit

It mirrors our other directional phrases.

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AlmightySpoonman@reddit

Your English is bad and you should feel bad.

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swest211@reddit

The same reason you don't. It's how we heard it when we were learning language. Neither way is really wrong. I don't agree that it's redundant, off and of don't mean the same thing.

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TheBimpo@reddit

English is a very casual language, so relax.

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Cumdog_Millionaire13@reddit

Redundancy is common across virtually all languages, this isn’t something unique to American English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundancy_(linguistics)

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Beneficial_Pin_7770@reddit

“Get off of the XX” that is how I say it.

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WowsrsBowsrsTrousrs@reddit

Not worth getting upset about or criticizing - if people want to use an extra syllable for emphasis/clarity/euphony, it harms no one and does not distort or change the meaning. Let it go.

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9for9@reddit

Cause I can and it's free.

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_PsychoLlama_@reddit

Probably because James Brown

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catincombatboots@reddit

Like "Take your crap off of the table" instead of "Take your crap off the table"? I wouldn't use the extra of but my mom would so it might be a generational thing. I'm a millennial for context.

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