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Chris -- 2018-04-11

#1 2009-01-09 14:50:04

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2714
Website

home-free

We’re not home-free, but we’re close, in my opinion.

You do the numbers and think that because you bought the house for $200000 and will sell it for $700000, you are home-free on any capital gains tax.

But they are home-free in the sense that once they come into the system, if they play by all the rules, they do not have to worry

[Newpaper section:] Family Finance [Headline:] Safe, but not home-free [in article:] today, even without burdensome mortgage payments, Harry and Paula (not their real names) are not financially home-free. This Boomer couple with semi-dependant children are finding it hard to prioritize

There is a subtle pronunciation difference for me which goes along with the presence or absence of a hyphen here: with the hyphen the stress is pretty even and may be a primary stress on “home”: it cannot easily be stronger on “free” (though in some contexts it actually could be.) Without the hyphen either both words get a primary stress (almost making you want to write a comma between them) or the primary stress is on “free”.
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The meaning difference is pronounced for me.
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“Be/get home free” means to arrive safely at a permanently safe destination (metaphorical or otherwise). The “free” may refer, especially with “be”, to one’s state at the end of the process (free of former dangers and restrictions, and/or from incurred debts). Or it may refer (especially with “get”) to the manner in which one arrived (without paying the normal price to get there). “Be home-free” can only mean “lacking (that negative possession) a home”—perhaps a creative way to describe a divorcee or one who has unloaded a lemon of a house onto some poor buyer.
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The first is parallel to “get out of jail free” or “free and clear”. The second is parallel to “cancer-free”.
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But that’s not how these people are using the word/phrase.
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Does it strike the rest of you as odd? Are they making a mere orthographic mistake, or do you suppose they would pronounce them as I described them above?


*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

(Possible Corollary: it is, and we are .)

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