March 3, 2008
"Based off"
Where did this horrible expression come from? I had never noticed it before, but a good half of the undergraduate papers my wife was recently grading included either "based off" or "based off of". Looking online I found this Boston Globe article from last month, which notes that while the earliest Nexis reference dates back to 1979, the surge in usage has taken place in just the past few years. Googling "based on" still produces far more hits than "based off", but the latter still is good for over four million citations at last count. I wasn't able to find all that much more on the expression, aside from this Metafilter thread which predictably sees commentors line up behind prescriptivist or descriptivist banners. Seems rather pointless, that: for the self-proclaimed descriptivists, it seems to be all or nothing -- either you embrace every linguistic mutation, or you must be an intolerant, reactionary, tide-commanding prescriptivist. I say forget the labels, embrace felicitous neologisms, and hold the line against outright mistakes -- "based off" emphatically included.
Posted by David on March 3, 2008 9:58 PM
It may be regional - I've *never* seen it in writing. On the other hand, I got two IM things in a paper yesterday.
Posted by: Michael Tinkler on March 4, 2008 1:06 AM
If only it were regional! Those students came from all over the USA, and Googling the expression yields hits all over the Web.
Posted by: David on March 4, 2008 8:39 AM
"Based around" has been spotted in, gasp!, journalism. I suppose it's proof positive that the metaphor in question is dead.
Posted by: dearieme on March 4, 2008 9:15 AM
"Based on" is based on the frozen analogy of one object standing on another, e.g., "the vase is based on the table." The analogy is to one idea based on another, e.g., his conclusion was based on his reading of Homer." "Based off" makes no sense in this analogy.
-Jerry
Posted by: Anonymous on December 17, 2008 9:19 AM
haha Im a undergraduate in Australia and I use based off of, thanks I will start using based on instead
Posted by: bob on May 16, 2009 7:33 PM
Bob, you might also want to consider using punctuation.
Posted by: Lisi on June 28, 2009 2:43 AM
Thanks for correcting me.
Posted by: RC on July 1, 2009 1:47 PM
Grading paper after paper... "based off" ... ahgahgahhgahhag! And no matter how many times I point it out, students revert to it. 'That durn internet1' (It is so nice to find compatriots in frustration... thank you.)
Posted by: David on November 30, 2009 5:51 AM
Thanks a lot for this article of yours!
I'm a translator in Japan, and I've just run into the phrase "based off" and "based off of". Totally puzzled and having Googled, I've found this article.
It helps a lot.
Posted by: baldhatter on March 7, 2010 11:18 AM
I am an undergraduate student writing a paper right now! I started to write "based off" and thought it sounded very informal and grammatically wrong, so I googled it to look for alternatives (and stumbled upon your blog). Ironic, kind of.
I'm assuming that you meant "based on" was the better alternative, so I'm going to use that.
:)
Posted by: Jessica on March 11, 2010 4:42 PM
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