Reply
Fri 30 Oct, 2015 12:35 am
Hi all?
While reading a novel, 'Jaws', I ran into this phrase which is puzzling.
Could you please check this out?
"Now Police Chief Brody is trying to get the boy to come ashore as fast as possible.
It could be the shark, but we just don't know."
Hooper put the boat in reverse, to back away from the waves.
As he looked off the stern, he saw a silver part of the wave-motion,
but it moved independently. 'The fish! Get the kid out! Quick!", he yelled.
What caught my eyes was 'look off something' as in 'He looked off the stern'
Well, as far as I know 'off' has something to do with 'detachment'
such as 'Wipe off the tears. Take off your clothes. Get off me' and so on.
As a preposition, 'off' also means 'away from', 'apart or distant from', dictionaries say.
When you look off something, is it like you try to avoid looking at it
and turns your head away from it?
What exactly does that mean and does 'off' have no connotation of 'detachment' in this case at all?
It's not easy to understand.
I'd appreciate any comment from you.
Thank you.
You're over-analyzing it. He's on the boat, so in looking toward the back of the boat, at the sea, he's looking "off the stern." If he looked toward the front of the boat, at the sea, this writer would probably say he looked "off the bow." There are no obscure rules about using "off" entailed in the expression.
"Look off" is a phrasal verb and must be considered as such. A phrasal verb is an idiomatic phrase consisting of a verb and another element, typically either an adverb, as in 'break down', or a preposition, for example 'see to', or a combination of both, such as 'look down on'. Phrasal verbs with 'off' are very common, far too many to list, and, yes, many of them involve some sort of detachment, motion, displacement, removal etc. Many have multiple meanings e.g. 'go off' can mean to depart from a place, but also (at least in UK usage) guns and explosives 'go off', food 'goes off' (spoils), an occurence or happening or planned event 'goes off', an alarm (clock, fire) 'goes off', epoxy resin 'goes off' (cures).
I looked off the hill - I looked from the hill towards somewhere else.
That meat looked off (or looked "off") - that meat looked spoilt or rotten
Milk goes off quickly in warm weather.
It is also worth noting that this is not standard nautical terminology. For whatever other expertise Benchley might wish to claim, nautical terms are not on his list. A mariner would simply have said that "he looked astern."
@Setanta,
Thank you, Setanta. Now it has gotten much clearer.
Yeah, as a foreigner to whom English is not a native tongue,
I tend to be over-analyze over something rather puzzling.
Buddies once told me that I'm hair-splitting sometimes. Haha.
Thank you again for your nice answer, Setanta.
@Tes yeux noirs,
Wow. Just 'go off' alone seems to have numerous meanings in various occasions.
Thank you Tes yeux noirs. I like the sentences you showed.
I want to memorize all of them.
Selected Answer
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace