he's off beam
he's wrong
TRANSLATION
off beam = unrecht, falsch, verkehrt --- GOOGLE INDEX off beam: approximately 140,000 Google hits
STATISTICS
IN THE PRESS
David Cameron fails to deliver a convincing diagnosis and his prescribed treatment is way OFF BEAM.
(The Guardian)
---
Austerity plan OFF BEAM
(The Sunday Times article headline)
(The Guardian)
---
Austerity plan OFF BEAM
(The Sunday Times article headline)
Did you
know?
off beam
adjective phrase
1. wrong, mistaken, or irrelevant (informal)
2. not following a radio beam to maintain a course
(Collins Dictionary)
---
The word "beam," in addition to referring to a piece of wood, originally also meant "tree" (related to the German Baum), a use that survives today in "hornbeam," a type of birch tree.
Sailors understood beam to be one of the timbers stretching side to side of a ship and holding it together. From this usage beam came to mean a ship's greatest breadth, which is why you can call someone "broad in the beam," or wide in the hips.
A ship that is "on its beam ends" is almost over on its side and about to capsize, so if a person is on their beam ends they are in a very bad situation.
As for the adjective "off beam," this is when someone is mistaken or on the wrong track. In this sense, the person is being compared to an aircraft that has strayed from the radio beam (signal) that is used to guide it.
"Beam me up Scotty" will forever be associated with the American television series Star Trek, as the words with which Captain Kirk asked Lt. Commander Scott to beam (transport) him from a planet back to the starship USS Enterprise. These exact words were never actually used in any of the television scripts, but were later used in the film versions.
(adapted from the Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins)
---
SYNONYMS
amiss, askew, false, imprecise, inaccurate, incorrect, inexact, mistaken, off target, off the mark, on the wrong track, wide of the mark, way off, wrong
---
SMUGGLE OWAD into today's conversation
"This market analysis appears to be way off beam."
---
Thanks to Claude for suggesting today's word!
adjective phrase
1. wrong, mistaken, or irrelevant (informal)
2. not following a radio beam to maintain a course
(Collins Dictionary)
---
The word "beam," in addition to referring to a piece of wood, originally also meant "tree" (related to the German Baum), a use that survives today in "hornbeam," a type of birch tree.
Sailors understood beam to be one of the timbers stretching side to side of a ship and holding it together. From this usage beam came to mean a ship's greatest breadth, which is why you can call someone "broad in the beam," or wide in the hips.
A ship that is "on its beam ends" is almost over on its side and about to capsize, so if a person is on their beam ends they are in a very bad situation.
As for the adjective "off beam," this is when someone is mistaken or on the wrong track. In this sense, the person is being compared to an aircraft that has strayed from the radio beam (signal) that is used to guide it.
"Beam me up Scotty" will forever be associated with the American television series Star Trek, as the words with which Captain Kirk asked Lt. Commander Scott to beam (transport) him from a planet back to the starship USS Enterprise. These exact words were never actually used in any of the television scripts, but were later used in the film versions.
(adapted from the Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins)
---
SYNONYMS
amiss, askew, false, imprecise, inaccurate, incorrect, inexact, mistaken, off target, off the mark, on the wrong track, wide of the mark, way off, wrong
---
SMUGGLE OWAD into today's conversation
"This market analysis appears to be way off beam."
---
Thanks to Claude for suggesting today's word!
