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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
We’ve been scooped by the Merriam-Webster site. The M-W editors point out that “day today” for “day-to-day” may be an eggcorn.
It is quite a popular switch. Here are some examples. On an English web corpus, the substitution of “a day today basis” for “a day to day basis” happens in about 1 out of 300 instances.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Explain for us how you see the semantics working? How does “day today†fit the contexts we use “day-to-day†in? (I feel like it does, but I’m not sure how to express it so I can say “I think it doesâ€.)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Could be several different interpretations of the semantics. It partly depends on what the speaker thinks that “day-to-day” means.
The OED gives these meanings for the adjective:
A. Of or relating to each day in succession; happening regularly every day; daily. Also: concerned with each successive day without consideration for the future; that is focused on the short-term. B. Of an everyday character; ordinary; commonplace.
Probably best to take a specific example. Here’s one drawn from a summary of an article in the Women’s Studies International Forum.
Such narrow conceptions of the feminist collective identity stand in opposition to the ways feminism is practiced on a day-today basis, and contribute to a complex negotiation of the feminist identity.
In this case, it seems like the author is thinking of the meaning “of an everyday character.” If so, then the “day-today” substitution might mean something like “just like today, an ordinary day.” But the example may also be depending on the eggcorn to evoke something not contained in the normal understanding of “day-to-day”: a feeling of something being modern, up-to-date.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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So, A. daily could be sort of “each day when it is todayâ€, with the added implication possible that you don’t focus on tomorrow. (As Emily Brewster suggested, “day today†would naturally bring to mind “day tomorrow†but contrasts with it.) Or, B. something that occurs each day while it is today could also be seen as quotidian, boring, ordinary, etc. The notion of being up-to-date fits with the notion of “each day while it is today†but is a further development, not so clearly part of the eggcorn.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Maybe the meaning “up-to-date†comes from contrasting day today with day yesterday. I think I do use day-to-day in some contexts to mean something like up-to-the-minute, changed frequently enough that it cannot be out-of-date.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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