Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
It seems like we have discussed this sort of thing before (perhaps with away vs. a way ?), but I’m not finding it. Anyhow, there are lots of these:
Kristen and Josh begin a new in Atlanta, Ga
I think I will start a new in America
START A NEW IN ST. LOO. By Mark Hale
tomorrow you can start a new, when you open your eyes all your heartache will wash away into the ocean blue,
Invoke Janus when you wish to begin a new, when you need to make a fresh start.
The world’s most successful people find a way to begin a new when they find themselves at a crossroads.
You could take it to be a reanalysis of an adjective as a noun, which has of course happened hundreds of times in the development of English. A number of examples feel like a sort of deletion, where you know there is a noun expected after the adjective, but don’t need to say it because you know which one it is. In those cases, you could substitute a new one for a new .
Continue saved game or start a new [game], after update?
You can keep it in- to one discussin – not start a new [discussion] after each Q/A.
I want to start a new [role-play? game?] in Greenfoot but it keeps sending me to tutorial.
The pain is to throw the prototype out and to start a new [prototype?] when implementation starts.
The best organizations know when to call it quits on a bad idea, take the loss, and begin a new [idea? project?] in a better direction.
Anyhow, the meaning works pretty well thinking of it as some sort of a noun phrase, and if perps are analyzing it that way instead of as an adverb meaning “all over againâ€, I think we have an eggcorn. I suppose you could link it to cases like a way < away or a long < along by seeing them all as eggcorns of the adverbial-forming prefix a – with the indefinite article.
.
Don’t know what spelling it with a hyphen does, though it may make it clear that the prefix rather than the article is in mind:
I have no doubt I’ll find my path and start a-new when the timing is right
But “start a new [path/one]†would work pretty well here too.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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