The OED lists seven meanings for "offline" (as an adjective), of which only two have to do with computing. The earliest usage noted is from 1919, in the sense of "Situated or carried on away from a railway, or the main line of a railway; (also) not done by rail." You might as well complain "Let's take this offline" is stupid because no one's on a train.
Admittedly what you really want is the adverbial definition: "As an offline process; while offline (in various senses); spec. (a) by offline equipment; (b) with a delay between the production of data and its processing; (c) when not connected to a computing network, esp. the Internet," none of which really is applicable to "let's take this offline". But that argument misses the point, which is that the word "offline" originally referred to railroads and now is used in contexts of computing, airlines, manufacturing, sports, and video production; all these now-legitimate uses began with someone using the "wrong" word.
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syntheid
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Date: 2011-03-30 01:00 pm (UTC)Admittedly what you really want is the adverbial definition: "As an offline process; while offline (in various senses); spec. (a) by offline equipment; (b) with a delay between the production of data and its processing; (c) when not connected to a computing network, esp. the Internet," none of which really is applicable to "let's take this offline". But that argument misses the point, which is that the word "offline" originally referred to railroads and now is used in contexts of computing, airlines, manufacturing, sports, and video production; all these now-legitimate uses began with someone using the "wrong" word.