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Chris -- 2018-04-11

#1 2020-12-18 09:49:30

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

a new < anew

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 again”, 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* .

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

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