Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Adjective Phrase 13. And the adjective
phrase today is off-color. Okay. Let's take a look at the note here. If we say
something is off color, especially jokes, it means that some people will find them
to be rude or offensive, especially in regard to being like a sexually
suggestive. All right. Let's continue here. Sometimes the origin of a term is
progressive. It means you know, it's started one way and led to another meaning which
led to another meaning and finally it ended up at this meaning. What we have
today. So sometimes the origin of a term is progressive from another use and
meaning. In this case, it was originally created in the gem industry. You know,
diamonds or sapphires or something like that. To refer to the gems... to refer to a
gem basically or gems that were not transparent. So if it's like a
perfect diamond and it's beautiful and it's transparent well that's very
valuable or if it's purely another color like a blue diamond or some sort of a
sapphire or something that is as pure then it's very valuable. Sometimes it
will end up in between somewhere where it's kind of an off-color. So that's
that's where it comes from. So purely another color and so it was considered
to be of inferior value. So if it wasn't really you know , it wasn't really a pretty
one. It was somewhere in between it wasn't beautifully transparent or
another full color. They said it was off-color, and so the value was less. It
was considered to be inferior in value. All right. Let's continue. Then the use spread to
mean someone is not in good health or slightly unwell. Yeah. You could kind of
imagine this so you know when somebody's sick sometimes their appearance might
be off color. Maybe their face, maybe it's too pale or too white or something
like that. Okay. We're slightly unwell. Later on.
The meaning was extended, extended further to mean anything improper. Not
proper and vulgar. Vulgar could be mean like a little dirty.
Vulgar, especially with regard to language and jokes which is really the way
we'll use it today. All right. So let's continue. All right. Here's one other note here.
Before a noun it is usually used with a hyphen, but if it's after a noun it's usually
doesn't have a hyphen. Okay. So let's look at several examples here. Example number one.
That dirty old man you know, maybe he's got sex on his mind a lot or maybe... Yeah.
That dirty old man likes to tell off-color jokes. That's what we say. Maybe
there's some guy in a bar that's what he likes to do all the time. So we might say
that he's a dirty old man because maybe he has sex on the mind all the time. Or
number two. I like that comedian but he tells too
many jokes that are off-color in his stand-up comedy routine for me. So it's
not suitable for my taste. You know when he tells the other jokes I
like them. He's really funny or maybe you even like him as a comedy actor but in a
stand-up routine maybe he tells some of these jokes that are off-color. Maybe
somebody might be slightly offended by them. So they may say it that way.
All right. Let's look at number three. If you are a celebrity or politician. You
should be careful of making off-color tweets. You know , these days we we see
some some politicians and some celebrities. Sometimes get in trouble doing things
like this. That could cause a scandal or hurt your reputation. Okay. Good and the
last one here. It is improper to make any off-color comments around the office. So
again, we use it a lot with jokes but we could use it with other things like you
know comments or tweets or anything like that. Anyway, I hope you got it. I hope
it's clear. Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.