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I was just reading an article about the discovery by archaeologists of evidence of milk fat on pottery shards at sites in Southern England wich would put dairy farming in Britain back to the Iron Age in 4000 B.C.
The term "goes off" was used to describe the milk going sour.
I've never heard this used to mean food spoiling, or going bad, before. Of course, in context, I knew what he meant right away. It's obviously a British usage here. However, "goes off" or "going off" is an expression which means getting angry or losing one's temper in the US (at least in my area of the East Coast) for as far back as I can remember. Can it also mean this in Britain, or is that term used exclusively to connote spoiled food?
Here's the contextual usage:
>While the chemical testing can detect milkfats, Copley said he didn't know exactly how the milk was being used.
However, he added, "when you consider how soon milk goes off, it's most likely they were making butter, cheese or yogurt ... which actually keep a long time." <
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Dear WO'N: I have often heard complaint about food kept in refrigerator too long
hving an :off flavor".
My dictionary as sixth meaning of "off" as an adjective gives:
not up to what is usual, normal, standard, etc. !an off day"
Just as wine was discovered by accident, cheese etc. was undoubtedly found by accident.
Milk would have been so valuable, it would not have been thrown away just because it was
"rotten".
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And, of course, there's also "goes off" as in explosion or timer, etc.
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I am very sensitive to the aging of milk--I have often announced to our household, "You guys better finish up this milk; it's going off." of course it tastes just fine to them--they don't know what I'm going on about.
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Yecch, me too; I can tell by the smell, even. There's a narrow "window" where I can still drink it if it's going, but past that--down the drain it goes. Once when I was a kid, my mother made a batch of cornbread with buttermilk that had gone off, and I could even taste it in that. 
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Pooh-Bah
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"This milk's gone off" is a common expression on this side of the pond - well, not as common as it was before refrigerators became a standard item (rather later over here than over there). We also say "this milk has turned", presumably sour.
My own dislike of sour milk flavour also prevents me from using long-life milk, sterilised milk and evaporated milk. They all taste bad and flavour anything with which they are made. Cream and butter taste similarly rancid to me.
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And this from rkay just two days ago on the "Honkin'" thread!  (cross-threading): >well, in a Britslang moment, I'd have to say it would in any case be impossible for something to be honking smelly as 'honking' means smelly. As in, I think that cheese may have gone off.... oooh, yes, it's absolutely honking.<
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I've never heard 'going off' to mean getting angry. Yes, it's quite common to talk about milk and a few other things (mostly butter, cheese and other dairy products) as having 'gone off'. General British Isles English-speak.
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Pooh-Bah
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I've heard 'sounding off' used to describe someone expressing anger or irritation e.g: What's he sounding off about?
No Jackie, I'm not talking about breaking wind again [evil grin returned-e]
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I'm not talking about breaking wind again
What? You mean like honking?
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Pooh-Bah
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What? You mean like honking?
Nooo - wrong generation. I seem to remember that in my young days honking meant throwing up - usually for good cause! Odorous connections there I guess.
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old hand
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For me, "going off" would need to be qualified - "going off the handle" to mean angry. "Going off" on its own, I would understand as "becoming rotten", but I wouldn't use it myself. Y'know?
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In the context of getting angry or losing one's temper the most popular idiom here is "don't go off on me!" or "don't start going off on me!'. Then we might say, "Man! He really went off on me!"
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Pooh-Bah
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"going off the handle" to mean angry
Are you sure about that, Bean? We would say "flying off the handle" - at least *I would.
What am I doing here - must go home!
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Nooo - wrong generation.
Hmmm..... legally I could be a grandfather. It's not solely a generation thing, DeeEcksBee. Honking would never have been considered 'throwing up' in my neck of the woods, so that variation is local only to England.
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Maybe I was thinking of "going off the rails" but then I think that means something going terribly wrong. I'm a great one for mixing up stock phrases - not that I can think of any particularly salient examples at the moment but.
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The expression "gone off" to mean spoiled or sour is Australian as well. My ex, who hails from Adelaide, used it when I hadn't known him very long, and I was brought up short thinking he meant the milk had exploded. We were in Germany at the time and sometimes I felt more confident in conversations with the locals than I did with the boy from down under.
But have you ever been told the milk has clabbered?
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It's that chemically unstable milk that is always detonating, you know.
'Round these parts to "go off on somebody" is to yell at somebody in a vehement way, as in "Gee, I asked Joe when he was going to be ready and he just went off on me!"
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Anyone remember this one?
"...setting a precedent in the annals of military history, I am the first weapon to have humanitarian reasons for going off..."
said by Professor Barnhouse, after discovering that he has a wild talent for making munitions (including nuclear ones) explode - from a distance. The Army wants to exploit his ability, but he has reservations and winds up fleeing and going incognito, then destroying all the arsenals on both sides (they had wanted him to do it more "selectively"...)
(it might be paraphrased a little; I'm pulling it back from 1956 or so)
--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, Report on the Barnhouse Effect
The "going off" meaning exploding would certainly be a candidate for the root of the "getting angry" meaning.
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The expression "gone off" to mean spoiled or sour is Australian as well.
The ex-cons to my west are not the only Antipodeans to use it thusly, fwiw.
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My experience of 'gone off' has always been food related, though '(somebody) having an off day' is used quite a lot as well. Another usage for 'gone off' that I've heard used quite a lot is when someone gets annoyed, bored or put off with someone/thing. E.g: 'He's so annoying, I've gone right off him' or 'Yeah, I've gone off milk ever since I drank some that was off.' ( )
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I've heard "going off" for both food gone bad, and people gone bad (ie, who got very angry!). I've also heard "going off" as an expression of something being popular - only in Oz, though.
The funniest I heard was a comment from a tour guide on a tour I did through Western Australia. He'd opened a tin of beetroot slices as a condiment at lunch (why DO Australians put beetroot on "everything"?!) and no one took any. He looked at it part way through lunch and said, sarcastically, "I see the beetroot's really going off." No one said anything and he felt the need to explain: "I mean, it's not going off or anything - it's not popular...." I had a good giggle over that one! in trying to say it wasn't popular, he realised that he'd suggested it was going bad...eh, maybe you had to be there.
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>" I had a good giggle over that one! in trying to say it wasn't popular, he realised that he'd suggested it was going bad...eh, maybe you had to be there.
What's funny about that? The way you describe it, he sounds like a preternaturally coherent speaker, by Strine standards.
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why DO Australians put beetroot on "everything"?!
I dunno. Why do McDonalds put that little pickle on all of their burgers? Philosophy just wouldn't exist anymore without these little mysteries of life.....
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Great with vinegar in a salad. Or are you kidding me?
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FWIW, we just call 'em beets here.
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People eat beet roots?!?
I've *heard of people eating the greens, but.
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Or are you kidding me?
Giggle! You got it! Sliced beets, I do enjoy; horseradish, too. But saying beet root makes me think of the spidery little, well...roots that grow off the bottom of the beet.
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What's funny about that?What was funny, darling sijummmm, was the three meanings to what he said: 1. The beetroot is going off. Metaphoric, meaning it is popular. 2. The beetroot is going off. Literal. He realised it needed correction, because the beetroot was, in fact, still good, so in case no one had understood his intended - 3. Irony, he explained that by saying, "The beetroot is going off," he meant the opposite of the metaphoric instance, which, if it had been true, would have resulted in an empty tin instead of a full one. [tickle-e] 
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"The beetroot is going off,"
Which, if heard by a normal USn would have been understood as meaning the beetroot was exploding, or, if by Juan, was getting angry.
And, in any case, have provoked the question, "Beet root as opposed to beet what?"
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Sorry, MG - the only point of my post was to take a jibe at the delusions of the poor benighted West Islanders, who insist, against all the evidence, that they actually speak English.
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