I am not a native English speaker, I have a idiom that is difficult to understand.
She's still living off her parents.
I think this sentence means: She lives here alone and her parents live there. (because of 'off'='away')
but in dictionary 'live off' means : to get the money or the things you need from somebody/something
Why does 'live off' means that?
ah, this is one more sentence.
I've been living off rats mostly. (in Harry Potter)
What I think: I hate rats, so I have been living away from rats.
but this means: I have been eating rats.
I'm so confused
This is the original sentence:
Harry pulled open his bag and handed over the bundle of chicken legs and bread. "Thanks," said Sirius, opening it, grabbing a drumstick, sitting down on the cave floor, and tearing off a large chunk with his teeth. " I've been living off rats mostly. Can't steal too much food from Hogsmeade.
Best Answer
Off here indicates not the location of living but its source.
The idiom arises in the last half of the 18th century in association with the idiom “get one’s living off (of) the land”, meaning one obtains the income which sustained life by farming or by renting the farmlands one owned to others. Armies were likewise said to “live off the land” or “off the country”—meaning that in wartime they obtained what they needed by appropriating it from the territories they crossed rather than being supplied from home.
A similar use of off appears in the phrase dine off (pheasant, the haunch, six or seven courses) meaning one obtains one’dinner from these sources.
So to say that “She lives off her parents” means she obtains the necessities of life from her parents; to say that “I've been living off rats” means I get my nutrition by eating rats.