Source
r/etymology•
LumpyUnderpass

How/when did "off" begin to be used in the context of circuits, switches, etc (on/off)?

It's kind of a shower thought, so forgive me. Today the idea of an on/off switch is ubiquitous and I sound stupid for asking. But we didn't always have light switches, or electricity. Before that, did people refer to, say, a torch that was extinguished as "off"? It seems to me we always say a fire is "out," not "off." From the other senses of off, I wonder if the sense was originally of something like water or steam - sending the water back "off" into the river instead of turning a mill, for example. Circuits that generated power were originally circuits of water or steam... But that's just a guess and I'm curious if anyone has tracked it down. Anyone know?

Posted Nov 30, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

10926
RedactedRedditery•

I'm an electrician. I was taught that on and off were terms used with household plumbing, and their use was extended to electrical circuits when homes started getting electricity.

92
Boris740•

And then the fire alarm went off.

23
takethetunnel•

Which means that they went on.

20
LumpyUnderpassOP•

That makes sense. I wonder where they got "off" for plumbing. Perhaps the usage I speculated about, perhaps not. I've had theories in the past that sounded convincing but were just wrong. ("Bastard" is not in fact related to Spanish "basta," enough.)

I'm a lawyer and used to work in a firm where we represented labor unions' employee benefit trust funds - the local electricians and pipe trades were two of our big three clients (the other was operating engineers). Kind of fun to see electricians and plumbing crop up in the same sentence again :D

17
PetsArentChildren•

How can you tell if someone is a lawyer?

Edit: Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.

7
Dserved83•

They have tiny hands.

3
Master0fB00M•

I wonder if lawyers get in an argument with people, instead of saying "you'll hear from my lawyer" they'd say "you'll hear from me"?

3
LumpyUnderpassOP•

Oh, sorry I forgot to mention this but I also wonder where they got the idea of water being "on" a circuit. I mean, any of us today would say the water is "in" the pipe, right? Did the usage change over time - I remember a Heinlein novel where the characters had a minor point of saying they were "in" a spaceship not "on" it - maybe from the first water circuits where it wasn't an enclosed pipe and the water was physically "on" a sluice or whatever Conduit? Or was the idea of power being "on" around before all that (like, I dunno, the deal is on, you're on, it's on, it's on for tonight, etc. - those all seem modern but I'm sure there are older formulations). Hmmm. Gonna have to research and procrastinate, lol.

9
promonk•

I don't know if it's related or not, but in Latin in means both "in" and "on." Context determines the meaning.

11
tuctrohs•

When you have a faucet that is off, water is still in the pipe behind it, but it's not flowing. When you turn it on, you are turning on the flow of water not filling the volume of the pipe.

3
kingfrito_5005•

RedactedRedditery gave a good answer, but I think what you are really getting at is why is it on/off used to refer to active/inactive. It looks like in Old English 'on' was used as what we would now call 'in' or more generically, it was used similar to the way 'an' is used in modern German, meaning close, connected, related or adjacent, as well as 'on top of'. Off has it's own separate evolution, originally being an emphatic form of the word 'of'. By the 1600s it had come to mean 'away from' or essentially the antithesis of how on was used at the time. Today, the function of both words has narrowed to refer to vertical relation, but the off/on of electronic devices appears to be a hang over from the older sense of the words.

43
Muroid•

It hasn’t fully narrowed. I can think of examples where on is still used in the German ‘an’ sense rather than strictly the vertical ‘auf’ sense. ‘By’ certainly takes over some of that meaning, but ‘on’ hasn’t lost it completely even if the vertical relation is the more prominent meaning.

Paintings hang on the wall. You can rent a cabin on a lake. etc

12
iriebenYewpiter•

Haus am See, am, on'm, *omb, OHG umbi, Latin ambi, as though on by but actually from *Hemb^(h)i down to PIE, cp Ger um "around, round about".

2
pieman3141•

"Just off the road" seems to retain the "away from" meaning.

8
TheDebatingOne•

Or "you're off".

3
iriebenYewpiter•

the sense "away from" is seen in Indo-European cognates all over the place, eg. Greek apo, "off!" (as in get away from)

curiously, this might explain piss off, German ver-piss dich, cp. far, further, but also Ger. von "of, from" (no English cognate as far as I know, whereas German has no from-cognate, which is why this is curious; we have frömmeln "to be prudish", fromm "prudent" though)

3
Seismech•

As other have mentioned the application to electricity was borrowed from the use in plumbing to describe stopping the flow of water.

Part of the OED2's full entry for off, adv., prep., a., and n.1 -

(ɒf, ɔːf) Forms: 1–7 of, (5 ofe, 6 offe), 5– off (Sc. dial. aff). [Originally the same word as OF [entry for of, prep.], as explained under that word; off being at first a variant spelling, which was gradually appropriated to the emphatic form ...

....

4.

a. So as to interrupt continuity or cause discontinuance; as in break off, leave off, declare off, etc.

α c1340– [see BREAK v. 54].1387 TREVSa Higden (Rolls) VII. 377 Leve of [L. Desiste], Alwyn, wiþ þy good wille.c1475 Rauf Coilȝear 172 Is nane sa gude as leif of, and mak na mair stryfe.1596 SPENSER F.Q. vi. v. 36 His deuotion‥breaking of.

β 1567 J. MAPLET Gr. Forest 31b, It will soone wax barraine, and leave off fruit bearing.1657 R. LIGON Barbadoes (1673) 43 Upon Saturday‥they break off work sooner by an hour.1818 Sporting Mag. III. 91 The match went off, and all bets were declared void.1819 Metropolis II. 69 The Duke has declared off, and the wounded lover does not seem to be anxious to make his proposals of marriage.1892 Bookman Oct. 27/2 Zola began by being an idealist. He has not left off being one.Mod. To cut off supplies; to turn the water or gas off.

b. Discontinued, stopped, given up; no longer in operation or going on.

1752 C. LENNOX Fem. Quix. i. v, His illness having been only a violent head-ache,‥being now quite off.1760 R. HEBER Horse Matches ix. p. xxv, Match off, by consent.1785 Mrs. FLETCHER in Wesley's Serm. lvii. iii. 12, Wks. 1811 IX. 36 His fever seemed quite off.1882 Daily News 15 Aug. 2/1 He understood that the whole negotiation was now off.1901 Scotsman 12 Mar. 5/4 When football is ‘off’ and cricket not yet ‘on’.Mod. The gas is off at the meter. The water has been off for some hours.

15
nice___bot•

Nice!

-2
froneill15•

I found two cartoon clips showing it used to be common to say:

“Put out the light” which is in line with putting out a larger fire or extinguishing a candle. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zdWOGci4Gk0

Also “Turn out the light” which seems to allude to the act of turning the knob on a lantern to extinguish the wick. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q5p0eykzVTE

5
LumpyUnderpassOP•

I misunderstood what you were getting at at first, but that's very interesting. PUT OUT THOSE LIGHTS! I assume fired were put "out" long before electric lighting, and that's maybe what, 50+ years after electric lights became common? Sometimes language takes a long time to change. I was reading about centigrade vs Celsius earlier because I sometimes (used to) say centigrade by habit. I'm 36 and that's a thing I ultimately got from my grandpa (the official naming was changed circa 1950). I remember growing up with "pawn to king four" in chess, too, which was officially changed in the 70s or something. Maybe my dad is a traditionalist, but I can't be the only one. Just thought that was interesting. Thank you for those :)

5
froneill15•

Sorry! I had prepared a much longer post and then decided to shorten it, but it lost some meaning in the shortening.

Since your question had been more directly engaged by others already I just thought this additional tidbit was also interesting.

My father has always said centigrade!

2
tuctrohs•

My dad was an engineer in his twenties when centigrade was officially named Celsius. He deliberately choose to continue to use centigrade, not out of habit but because he believed that it was more respectful to Anders Celsius to continue using the logical name he gave his logical temperature scale than to put his name on it.

2
Gooblepops•

My granny (born 1906) used to say “quench the light” for an electric light.

2
tuctrohs•

To me, the first of those sounds quaint and antiquated, and the second sounds perfectly normal, although it's not something that I think is in my daily usage.

For context, I was born in the US in the 1960s, and grew up in the Northeast.

2
iriebenYewpiter•

A cable can be off'd quite literally

0
iriebenYewpiter•

It seems to me we always say a fire is "out," not "off."

Well, one way to extinguish a fire is to cover it. Compare German ''ab-decken''. Very close to ''stecken / aus-(/ab)stecken'' (un-/plug or maybe * plug out)

1