If you check the entry for of on Wordnik, you’ll find:
Before; until: five minutes of two.
Therefore, I’d regard the phrasing you ask about to be grammatical. However, I don’t generally hear that wording used with the fraction quarter. As said in the comments, phrases like:
- quarter to four
- fifteen minutes before four
are more common.
As for whether this person was using that phrasing to be humorous, you’d have to ask your friend. It might be colloquial.
Consider these two sentences
It’s nothing (a little) plastic surgery can fix.
This implies that the thing can not be fixed by plastic surgery.
It’s something a little plastic surgery can fix.
This implies that the thing can be fixed by plastic surgery.
In this case, nothing can be stated as the opposite of “something”, or as “not a thing”. And so when “something” can be fixed, “nothing” cannot.
Next, consider these two other sentences, which both have nothing in them.
It’s nothing (a little) plastic surgery can fix.
This implies that plastic surgery can not fix it, as it states it is “not a thing” that plastic surgery can fix.
it’s nothing a a little plastic surgery can’t fix.
At last, we arrive at the sentence given. If we “expand” out this sentence, we get
This is not a thing plastic surgery will not be able to fix.
And if we “cancel” out the ‘not’s’, we get
this is a thing plastic surgery will be able to fix.
Best Answer
You might find the arguments on this page to be interesting: What is the difference between "correct" and "right"?
The consensus there seems to be that "correct" refers to things that are provable, or factual, while "right" refers to opinions, or preferences. In other words, "correct" is objective (meaning there is external validation) while "right" is subjective (meaning that it varies between individuals).
In most cases "correct" and "right" are interchangeable, since there is often no difference between objective and subjective. For example:
This is both objectively and subjectively correct, since it can be both proven by external sources, and also is generally considered factual by most people.
The phrase "right English" is subtly different from "correct English". It implies that the person strongly that there is a right way to say something in English, which therefore means that anything else is the wrong way.
In some cases this may be true, but in many others it's purely subjective opinion. The perception is that, while there are certain general rules, there is enough subjective variation in English language use that "right" and "wrong" are not as important as whether a particular instance of English is "correct" or "incorrect" -- that it follows certain established rules.
To get to the point: it is possible to say, "That is right English", but it sounds both awkward and pretentious. The more common expression would be, "That is correct English".