One-off

This article is about singular production items. For other uses, see One-off (disambiguation).
Look up one-off in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

A one-off is something made or occurring only once, independent of any pattern.[1] First used in 1934,[2] this term is employed to differentiate singular items from those in a series: e.g. "the Lincoln Futura was a one-off". It has been suggested that it is a misspelling of "one-of", but this etymology is not supported by sources such as the Oxford English Dictionary.[3]

References

  1. ↑ BBC: Britishisms and the Britishisation of American English, 27 September 2012
  2. ↑ http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/one-off
  3. ↑ New York Times: The Origins of ‘One-Off’, 2 July 2010