Yesterday evening in class, a dear elderly gentleman, one of the most diligent students I've had, had a new question for me. The text in the book was having the students use 'phrasal verbs', those amusing two-word, one-meaning verbs like 'get up' or 'go ahead'. The text was specifically using them in the context of alarms, like smoke alarms. He wanted an explanation for the phrasal verb used when an alarm sounds.
Why do we use 'goes off' to say that an alarm 'turns on'?
After asking his question, he carefully stared off into the middle distance so as not to put me on the spot as I publicly and verbally pondered the ridiculousness of this linguistic oddity for the first time. "Your alarm is going OFF; please turn it OFF, or it won't go OFF... er, ahh, I mean it won't stop going OFF."
After a bit, I readily admitted to the class that this certainly had the potential to throw off (!) a night's sleep, at least until my alarm...
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