English Language & Usage Asked by Alex Ixeras on July 12, 2021
Not sure how to name this correctly, but there seems to be a trend of adding an "of" to phrasal verbs that ends in "off" and I’m wondering if that is, in fact, correct English.
Example from here:
I make a fortune off of them.
Shouldn’t the correct usage be
I make a fortune off them.
This use goes back to the 15th century (and Shakespeare used it), but as the OED says of it "In later use colloquial (nonstandard) and regional".
So the "trend" of using it has been going on for more than six hundred years; but the trend of regarding it as "incorrect" only seems to go back one or two hundred.
Answered by Colin Fine on July 12, 2021
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