tell off

prof d'anglais

prof d'anglais

Senior Member
Tours 37, France
English
I realise this thread's almost a year old but I'm looking for the origin of "to tell off" as a form of reprimand




Moderator note: The first four posts of this thread have been split from a thread on an unrelated topic.
 
    • We were talking about 'tell of' not 'tell OFF'. You should start a new thread for that.

    Isn't it just one of those in a long list of English compound verbs like look after, give up, put down.
     
    Yes I realise the original discussion was for another meaning of the same phrase, which was why I joined it. But I disagree about your suggestion of a compound verb, it doesn't have the same feel or look as one, to "tell off" suggests something less abstract.
     
    http://www.briggs13.fsnet.co.uk/book/t.htm

    Here's a suggestion: that it comes from to tick off, to tell off, to score off an offence in a list of offences against a wrong-doer. It's interesting as a derivation in that it deals as much with to tick off as with to tell off. We talk still of tellers in certain circumstances who count, and to tick off a list is common enough. I'm not quite sure where the force of reprimand comes from.

    P.S. I gather from Brewer that in the Tellers of the Exchequer, the word teller is a corruption of talliers - i.e. tally-men, men who tick off, or tell off. We get the word tally from that, I suppose, and tallywag.

    P.P.S. I see to my chagrin that the word tallywag has been appropriated by the urban community to mean penis. There was no such stuff in my thoughts. To me a tallywag is the crude device, usually a wooden board with hooks, on which numbers painted on metal disks are hung, to keep (i.e. publish to the spectators) the score in a country cricket match. I assume it comes from tally, to keep the score, or account. I was sorry to see that I couldn't get one reference to this meaning when I googled the word. What is the world coming to? I posted this PPS to avoid misunderstandings.
     
    I've been trying desperately to reconcile 'tally' with 'tell', for want of a better explanation but the connection, unfortunately, seems too obscure. Incidentally, the Tally-man is still a title used for someone who collects the premium against high-interest cash loans or instalment payments OR a man who lives with a woman outside of wedlock. I'm still looking (for the origin of "to tell off", not for a woman outside of wedlock).
     
    prof d'anglais said:
    I've been trying desperately to reconcile 'tally' with 'tell', for want of a better explanation but the connection, unfortunately, seems too obscure. Incidentally, the Tally-man is still a title used for someone who collects the premium against high-interest cash loans or instalment payments OR a man who lives with a woman outside of wedlock. I'm still looking (for the origin of "to tell off", not for a woman outside of wedlock).
    Click to expand...

    You'd accept that tally can mean to count, to enumerate, wouldn't you? And that a teller can be a vote-counter, for instance, and so to tell may well have meant to count, in one sense? I'm just saying that the suggestion isn't very far-fetched.
     
    Here's another citation without origin,

    Tell (someone) where to get off, to express anger at, rebuke strongly, 1902. Tell off, 1919.
    Tell on, to inform on, 1900.
    From "Listening to America" by Stuart Berg Flexner (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1982).
    Click to expand...

    The tell<>tally relationship certainly seems logical. The complication in the quote above is 'tell someone where to get off',
    which in AE is means to reprimand, just like 'tell off'. I haven't yet found an etymology for the longer phrase either.
     
    Oh I agree with you that a 'teller' is someone who 'counts' in whatever context, a teller in America is a bank counter clerk, a money counter but are you suggesting that someone who "tells" another off is counting from a theoretical list of wrong-doings?
     
    prof d'anglais said:
    Oh I agree with you that a 'teller' is someone who 'counts' in whatever context, a teller in America is a bank counter clerk, a money counter but are you suggesting that someone who "tells" another off is counting from a theoretical list of wrong-doings?
    Click to expand...

    Exactly; it's what the link I posted suggested. To tell off is to enumerate a list of wrong-doings: you've done this and this and this.....
     
    Loob said:
    This - you need to read to the end! - seems a reasonable hypothesis.

    Loob
    Click to expand...

    Here's a first! We disagree. Smokey Stover, the writer of the final paragraph in the link,
    seems to be referring to British military jargon to explain an AE slang term. He or she
    says that's less of a leap than the Flexner proposal. I think it's much more of a leap.
    It is an interesting speculation, but I don't buy it.
     
    cuchuflete said:
    Here's a first! We disagree. Smokey Stover, the writer of the final paragraph in the link, seems to be referring to British military jargon to explain an AE slang term.
    Click to expand...


    It's not my day for clarity of posting!

    The link is suggesting that the military sense of "tell off" {= single out} is a more likely origin for "tell off" meaning reprimand than an earlier-proposed idea that "tell off" meaning reprimand evolved from "tell someone where to get off".

    I think I'll just lurk for the rest of the day...

    Loob
     
    Tell off has three distinct definitions.
    1. To count out a number of people from a group to perform some particular task.
    2. To number in succession (military use).
    3. The one we are talking about here - to reprimand.

    OED gives earliest references for the first two from 1804 and 1833, respectively.
    For the third:
    1919 Cassell's New Eng. Dict. to scold.
    To appear in a dictionary in 1919, it must have been in use some time before.

    It links tell off with tick off, which began as military slang at about the same time; earliest reference:
    1915 He has been ‘ticked-off’ four or five times for it; but is not yet shot at dawn.

    I can't find anything substantive to explain how these came about.
     
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