Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

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Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

verb + off of

I often come across this construction:

verb + ‘off’ + ‘of’ + object

I’ve never really heard it in spoken English and wonder if you can say the same without ‘of’.

Just one example here from EFL Geek:

... just to get it OFF OF my hands since I wasn’t using it anymore.

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Comments

To say "Get it off my hands" is very natural English, but it would technically be considered a colloquialism.

Vriesea Sep-28-2005

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I think you can omit the of in this particular case. If you leave it in pronouce it as one word: "off-uv"

anonymous4 Sep-28-2005

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Honestly, being a non-American, English is just as hard as learning Russian [I'm Ukrainian, but you'd think I was born here *wink*]. There is so much slang and word shortenings that it's crazy. You can say both "get it off of my hands" or "get it off my hands." -Get it off of my hands- sounds a lot more urgent than -get it off my hands-, so say whichever one you really preffer. You'll be understood either way [and here I was almost typing understanded...way to go, proper English -_-]. ^_^

Mikahbot Sep-29-2005

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good day. I'm catherina from Georgia. I work at my dissertation and i research present day english word-formaton. Mainly i work on word-shortenings, such as abbreviations, acronyms, clippings and blendings. i have a lot of examples, but i cant find any literature or some linguists opinion in the web.i would be very grateful, if u could help me with this information.

thank you in advance
Catherina

kekebakardi Oct-04-2005

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It's fine but it is a collocation that's used more in speech. It just adds a bit more emphasis to a sentence.

DBP Nov-27-2005

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