off of a cliff v.s. off a cliff

Hi !

What would you choose:

  1. I’m falling off of a cliff
  2. I’m falling off a cliff

Thanks !

Hi,

I would go for ‘off a cliff’ but I can hear Frank Sinatra singing: ‘I can’t take my eyes off of you…’ probably because ‘off you’ wouldn’t scan here!

Alan

I wonder what that means. :?

It means that “off you” wouldn’t fit into the song. It wouldn’t work with the rhythm of the song as one syllable would be missing.[YSaerTTEW443543]

TOEIC listening, photographs: Checking the map[YSaerTTEW443543]

Hi, Alan
Many thanks for your help !

Hi, Amy

That puzzled me too :slight_smile: So I had to resort to the dictionary and found the meaning, but now I see that this meaning Alan had intended is not very popular among native speakers.

Hi LS

I would think of scan in this sort of ‘metrical context’ more with the meaning of ‘analyze’ rather than simply ‘fit’. Of course, the word ‘scan’ has a number of other meanings as well.
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