At 01:47 5/02/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Can anyone tell me where the expression " one off" came from? As in ," that
>car is a one off" . Meaning it is the only one ever made..It seems to me it
>should be one of not off. What is it off of? One off what?.."One of" seems
>like a shortening of " one of a kind" , but one off? Someone suggested that
>is a British expression ???.....I don't know why but for some reason it
>drives me nuts when I hear or read "one off". It is the same thing when
>someone says that a car has had a "frame off" restoration....I think that is
>a mixture of "body off" and "frame up" and it ends up "frame off" which makes
>no sense ...but at least I can see where it comes from, but I have no idea
>where we got "one off" .....Am I the only one who notices these things? Am I
>turning into Andy Ronney?.....Jerry Burr
Maybe you should consider the expression in the sense of 'the only one that
rolled off the production line',
or 'one off' in the sense of 'and off the car went (out of the factory)',
and cosidering it is the only one----) 'one off'.
>From this point of view, your 'one off' nightmare might ease to some extend,
but since my mothertongue is Dutch (Belgium!) and I am but a modest
translator ;-), i wont bet my car on it...
Stiffe,
automotive journalist
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