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stark raving » star-craving

Chiefly in:   star-craving mad

Classification: English – resyllabification

Spotted in the wild:

  • And I see that your bi-polar cycle has apparently bottomed out, and the roller-coaster ride to mania has begun to RISE eggzactly as I predicted. By tomorrow, you’ll be star-craving MAD! (alt.consciousness.4th-way)
  • “This is my social life,” said Workentine. “It gives me a reason to get up in the morning. If I just sat at home looking at the four walls, I’d go star-craving mad.” (link)
  • I thought that I was going to go star craving mad over the weekend because there was hardly any posts!!! (link)
  • The snoring was enough to drive the sanest person star craving mad. (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

See also _stark raven mad_ and _stalk raving mad_.

| Comments Off link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/07/04 |

pains(-)taking » pain-staking

Variant(s):  pain staking

Classification: English – resyllabification

Spotted in the wild:

  • “After all of my pain-staking labour :) I’ve discovered fontforge will automatically create encoding files for you. (I’m glad I did it all manually coz I learned a fair bit about stuff.)” (link)
  • “This will be a pain staking ordeal. Why you may ask well because my ass … So as I begin this pain staking ordeal…” (link)

The first citation was supplied to me by John McChesney-Young on 16 December 2004. Huge numbers of examples can be Googled up.

A nice recutting, suggesting that “take pains to” is either not as widely known as I’d thought or is often not appreciated as the source of “painstaking”.

| 2 comments | link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/05/07 |

let alone » little lone

Variant(s):  little own

Classification: English – resyllabification

Spotted in the wild:

  • nobody knows how a race is going to come out until the race happens, i don’t have a grudge with ben or you. i guess we will have to see this season, i wouldn’t be so cocky, you don’t even know me, little lone what i’m doing to my car. (link)
  • I think that if I hadn’t had her support I would never had plucked up the courage to buy a corset little own wear one. (link)
  • Some of the biggest complainers (like Tiribulus for example) have never even installed it little lone used it and have no Idea what they are talking about. But pretend to some how magically know it all…. (link)
  • I won’t argue with you as I can’t even use dreamweaver properly, little own master html or other codes or do any programming, but what do I call myself? (link)
  • I haven’t seen anyone make an argument against him that I find is more convincing. Simply put there are no contemporary writings so until there are some found then I wouldn’t be convinced Jesus even existed (little own a God). (link)
  • Claire ground her teeth, part of her wanted to charge into that school and teer that guys head off for even hasseling her daughter little own the implied mutant comment. (link)
  • Please be kind, remember this all took place before resources like this reflector were available, and u were lucky if one other guy in the area radio society even listened to 160, little lone trying to transmit. (link)
  • Granted if I used Channel Master’s equipment I’m looking at approx $300 for the parts but $400 for the install is insane! I would install it myself by my house is three stories high and I don’t have a ladder that even comes close, little lone I don’t want to take the chance of falling off the steep roof. (link)
  • i was way too hott for them to even see me little lone any one talk to me (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

From counting Google hits, _little lone_ seems to be slightly more common than _little own_. Even though the meaning of _lone_ and _own_ is quite different, we have entered both variants into the same entry: the salient part of the semantical reanalysis seems to be _little_, ie a lack or low degree.

Several of the examples show that the substitution of what would have to be seen as an adjective for the formulaic _let alone_ gives can lead the writer into serious syntactic difficulties, which are resolved more or less felicitously.

| 1 comment | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/02/13 |

prima donna » pre-madonna

Variant(s):  premadonna

Classification: English – cross-language – resyllabification

Spotted in the wild:

  • Ankela is a little pre-madonna. What an attitude problem. (rec.sport.soccer)
  • “A contractor who was working for me quit about 2 weeks into January. The dude was premadonna headcase; came and went as he pleased, social moron (i.e. HR disaster waiting to happen), unreliabliable, etc. Not terribly uncommon in the software industry, but aggravating nonetheless.” (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

| 3 comments | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2004/12/09 |
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