"stand clear OF the door" VS. "stand clear OFF the door"
xmllmx
I always see such a note: "stand clear OF the door," and I know its
meaning. I also know "stand clear OF the door" is widely used far more
than "stand clear OFF the door". However, I think this statement
should be expressed as "stand clear OFF the door". Because the word
OFF has a meaning of "away from" but the word OF hasn't.
Who can give me a convincing explanation? Thanks in advance!
Will
"Clear off" means "go away", as in "Clear off or I'll tan your
hide" ("go away or I'll smack your bottom"). In the cited example OFF
is simply incorrect. As you have worked out, "off" can mean "away
from", so you could say "Stand off the door", or "stand off from the
door", which would have a naval/nautical flavour. Definitions of the
word "of" are irrelevant here, since the word is part of the phrase
(or something, don't know the technical term) "clear of".
There, that helped, I'm sure!
Will.
Don Phillipson
news:72edb5d5-2c96-4a03...@r15g2000prh.googlegroups.com...
> I always see such a note: "stand clear OF the door," and I know its
> meaning. I also know "stand clear OF the door" is widely used far more
> than "stand clear OFF the door". However, I think this statement
> should be expressed as "stand clear OFF the door". Because the word
> OFF has a meaning of "away from" but the word OF hasn't.
"Stand clear of XYZ" has been long used in English, so it
was common sense to adopt it as "Stand clear of the doors"
when self-shutting doors were first introduced (on the London
underground railway in the 19th century.)
Your constructivist theory would be applicable if English
phrases were governed by a priori rules (that applied
uniformly to all phrases including those unimagined by
the people codifying rules.) But they are not.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
Chris Malcolm
> "xmllmx" <xml...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:72edb5d5-2c96-4a03...@r15g2000prh.googlegroups.com...
>> I always see such a note: "stand clear OF the door," and I know its
>> meaning. I also know "stand clear OF the door" is widely used far more
>> than "stand clear OFF the door". However, I think this statement
>> should be expressed as "stand clear OFF the door". Because the word
>> OFF has a meaning of "away from" but the word OF hasn't.
> "Stand clear of XYZ" has been long used in English, so it
> was common sense to adopt it as "Stand clear of the doors"
> when self-shutting doors were first introduced (on the London
> underground railway in the 19th century.)
"Clear of" is here being used in the sense of "out of the way of", and
applies to many moving things.
--
Chris Malcolm, IPAB, School of Informatics,
Informatics Forum, 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh EH8 9AB
Chuck Riggs
wrote:
IMO, it is an idiomatic expression and, as such, defies explanation.
--
Regards,
Chuck Riggs
Near Dublin, Ireland
John Kane
'Stand clear off the door' sounds like a colloquial usage where you
are telling someone not to stand on the door. This assumes that the
door is on the floor.
In most cases it is difficult to stand on a door.
John Kane Kingston ON Canada
Pat Durkin
news:3c6c0f92-0bac-4731...@u27g2000pro.googlegroups.com
Well, there may be some cases in which an old cellar door is involved.
And I have seen installation of new, metal doors, I suppose when
retrofitting stom cellars and bomb shelters. These are the
near-horizontal sloping doors providing access to the basement from the
outside.
CDB
> I always see such a note: "stand clear OF the door," and I know its
> meaning. I also know "stand clear OF the door" is widely used far
> more than "stand clear OFF the door". However, I think this
> statement should be expressed as "stand clear OFF the door".
> Because the word OFF has a meaning of "away from" but the word OF
> hasn't.
The basic expression is "stand clear". If someone is standing in the
way of a door that is about to be opened, or under a piano that is
about to fall, you might shout that at them. It means "get (or stay)
out of the way", usually out of the way of something dangerous. When
a general warning is put on a sign, with no immediate danger or
inconvenience apparent, it can be made more specific by adding, for
example, "of the door".
The reason we don't say "stand clear off the door" in those
circumstances is a little complicated. In "stand clear", "clear" is
an adverb that conveys the idea of "away from", so it isn't necessary
to reinforce the idea with "off". But there is also an expression "to
stand off", which is often used with respect to ships to mean "to keep
some distance from", but could be used with respect to a person, to
mean "stand somewhere else than". "Stand off the door" in that sense
would mean "don't stand on the door". But "clear" has another
meaning, "completely", so if you used the expression "stand clear off
the door", it would naturally be taken to mean "stand completely off
(do not stand even a little bit on) the door". As John and Pat have
said, it's possible to stand on some doors, but not usual.
Barbara Bailey
through.
"CDB" wrote:
> xmllmx wrote:
>> I always see such a note: "stand clear OF the door," and I know its
>> meaning. I also know "stand clear OF the door" is widely used far
>> more than "stand clear OFF the door". However, I think this
>> statement should be expressed as "stand clear OFF the door".
>> Because the word OFF has a meaning of "away from" but the word OF
>> hasn't.
> The basic expression is "stand clear". ... It means "get (or stay)
> out of the way", usually out of the way of something dangerous. When
> a general warning is put on a sign, with no immediate danger or
> inconvenience apparent, it can be made more specific by adding, for
> example, "of the door".
>
> The reason we don't say "stand clear off the door" in those
> circumstances is a little complicated. In "stand clear", "clear" is
> an adverb that conveys the idea of "away from", so it isn't necessary
> to reinforce the idea with "off". But there is also an expression "to
> stand off", which is often used with respect to ships to mean "to keep
> some distance from", but could be used with respect to a person, to
> mean "stand somewhere else than". "Stand off the door" in that sense
> would mean "don't stand on the door".
And "stand off from the door" would mean the same thing as "stand clear
of the door": stand well away from it, completely out of the area it
moves through when it is opening or closing.
The problem that I am seeing here is that the OP originally wanted to
replace one phrase that is an idiom ("stand clear of") with the word
"stand" and another idiom "clear off". It's when you start trying to
replace parts of an idiom that things get really sticky, since an idiom,
by definition, is a phrase that, as a whole, does not mean *quite* what
the individual words mean: "A speech form or an expression of a given
language that is peculiar to itself grammatically or cannot be understood
from the individual meanings of its elements, as in 'keep tabs on' ."
Mark Brader
>> out of the way", usually out of the way of something dangerous. When
>> a general warning is put on a sign, with no immediate danger or
>> inconvenience apparent, it can be made more specific by adding, for
>> example, "of the door".
Barbara Bailey writes:
> The problem that I am seeing here is that the OP originally wanted to
> replace one phrase that is an idiom ("stand clear of") with the word
> "stand" and another idiom "clear off". It's when you start trying to
> replace parts of an idiom that things get really sticky...
Thinking about this now, I must disagree with the statement that "stand
clear (of)" is a basic expression, because "clear of" can be used by
itself. For example:
* If we install it up there, won't we have trouble keeping all the
bare wires clear of each other?
* That cart looks like it's over the edge of the platform -- is it
really clear of the trains?
--
Mark Brader, Toronto | "Professor, I think I have a counterexample."
m...@vex.net | "That's all right; I have two proofs."
My text in this article is in the public domain.
tony cooper
>C.D. Bellemare:
>>> The basic expression is "stand clear". ... It means "get (or stay)
>>> out of the way", usually out of the way of something dangerous. When
>>> a general warning is put on a sign, with no immediate danger or
>>> inconvenience apparent, it can be made more specific by adding, for
>>> example, "of the door".
>
>Barbara Bailey writes:
>> The problem that I am seeing here is that the OP originally wanted to
>> replace one phrase that is an idiom ("stand clear of") with the word
>> "stand" and another idiom "clear off". It's when you start trying to
>> replace parts of an idiom that things get really sticky...
>
>Thinking about this now, I must disagree with the statement that "stand
>clear (of)" is a basic expression, because "clear of" can be used by
>itself. For example:
>
>* If we install it up there, won't we have trouble keeping all the
> bare wires clear of each other?
>
>* That cart looks like it's over the edge of the platform -- is it
> really clear of the trains?
Medicos have the right idea. They just shout "Clear!" before zapping
and let the listener decide how clear to get.
--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida
CDB
[re: "stand clear of the door"]
>> C.D. Bellemare:
>>> The basic expression is "stand clear". ... It means "get (or
>>> stay) out of the way", usually out of the way of something
>>> dangerous. When a general warning is put on a sign, with no
>>> immediate danger or inconvenience apparent, it can be made more
>>> specific by adding, for example, "of the door".
> Barbara Bailey writes:
>> The problem that I am seeing here is that the OP originally wanted
>> to replace one phrase that is an idiom ("stand clear of") with the
>> word "stand" and another idiom "clear off". It's when you start
>> trying to replace parts of an idiom that things get really
>> sticky...
> Thinking about this now, I must disagree with the statement that
> "stand clear (of)" is a basic expression, because "clear of" can be
> used by itself. For example:
> * If we install it up there, won't we have trouble keeping all the
> bare wires clear of each other?
> * That cart looks like it's over the edge of the platform -- is it
> really clear of the trains?
Agreed, to those examples, but. I suppose it depends on what you mean
by "expression". I was using it, without much reflection I admit, to
mean "sequence of words often found together, with an accepted
meaning, which can be used as a unit in connected discourse". Or
something. I said that, in the OP example, it was "*the* basic
expression", meaning the unit on which the longer phrase was based.
But you appear to be using "(*a*) basic expression", as a synonym for
Barbara's "idiom". I agree that the expression isn't irreducible,
although the use of "stand" seems to be a little bit of an idiom,
since (IMO) the idea isn't necessarily that the stander begins or even
ends on his feet. This is certainly true of the nautical usage, and
may be related to the semantic linkage that has taken "stare" from
Latin for "to stand" to Spanish "estar", "to be" when location or
temporary condition are referred to.
I think there's a lot of fluidity in the use of these expressions,
both the OP's and the ones we use in discussing it, as there is in
language in general. Is "I stand corrected" an expression? An idiom?
You can say "I have been corrected," or "With a class ratio of one
teacher to fifty ESL students, it will be hard work to keep all the
essays corrected." (I recognise the shift in meaning, but I think
it's slight enough that the example is still usable.)
I'm thinking, here, or so I tell myself, as I write; I would read
comments on the subject from Mark or Barbara, or other interested RRs,
with great interest.