think your way thin

[Michael Israel]

Oops, that is, the webpage announces it as
"think yourself thin". "Segment" might be overdoing
it, I think.

-mi

On 4/11/07, Michael Israel <michael.israel at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The NPR webpage announces their segment on
> Judith Beck's book "Think yourself segment"
> but the announcement I heard on the radio
> has it as "Think  your way thin."
>
> This appears to be novel extension of the English
> "way" construction, as in "They hacked their way through
> the shrubbery" or "He wormed his way into her heart."
>
> The construction has been very productive for a long time
> but I've only ever seen it with prepositional phrase and
> adverbial complements, never before, as far as I know,
> with an adjectival complement. Of course, there are lots
> of examples where a PP complement has a metaphorical
> meaning, denoting a state rather than a location, (as in
> "wormed his way into her heart"), so perhaps it's not
> such a stretch to find an adjectival complement or too.
>
> But is it in fact a new stretch? Has anyone else noticed
> examples like this before?
>
> -mi
>

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