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I remember I only say these to my daughter

"She couldn't find her way home"

"She got lost in the forest"

I have never said "she lost her way home" to her.

But today, she said "she lost her way home" to me.

Chatgpt said "she lost her way home" is a correct expression. But I feel it is not correct.

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  • Who got lost? A girl or your daughter? Did she use the pronoun "I" as in; "I lost my way home" or was she referring to a different girl (perhaps in a story).
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Jun 23, 2023 at 7:38
  • I would have thought the same - I wouldn't use I lost my way immediately followed by the intended destination, but I got lost on the way to XXX. However, this Ngram shows that the expression is becoming increasingly common.
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Jun 23, 2023 at 8:11
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    @Mari-LouA, my daughter and I were playing a game and she pretended that her doll got lost and couldn't find the way home. So, "she" referred to a certain girl in a game.
    – Tom
    Commented Jun 23, 2023 at 9:52
  • @Tom "She lost her way home" is fine and perfectly grammatical. See here link
    – BillJ
    Commented Jun 23, 2023 at 10:16
  • Apparently some people are okay with I lost my way home. But many others (including me) would notice it as "unusual", so perhaps you should stick with your first instinct, and avoid using it yourself.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jun 23, 2023 at 13:32

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She couldn't find her way home.

She lost her way home.

These are both fine.

"Home" is best classified as a preposition. In your examples "home" means "to her place of residence", where the goal meaning of "home" is clear.

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    I'm OK with "She lost her way" or "She lost her way going home" but "She lost her way home" doesn't sound idiomatic to me. "to lose her way" is a phrasal verb meaning "to get lost"; "her way home" is a noun phrase meaning "a route taking her home". But it's weird to force them together like that.
    – Stuart F
    Commented Jun 23, 2023 at 9:28
  • @StuartF link
    – BillJ
    Commented Jun 23, 2023 at 9:39
  • @BillJ: I don't like it either. Even in AmE it's much less common than [I got] lost on my way home, and if you switch the corpus in that link to BrE, I lost my way home is too rare to even show on the chart.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jun 23, 2023 at 13:29
  • If we can say "She lost her way", there's no reason why we can't also say "She lost her way home", meaning "She lost her way to her place of residence". I'd feel perfectly comfortable saying"I lost my way home".
    – BillJ
    Commented Jun 23, 2023 at 16:25
  • Is "home" best classified as a preposition or a prepositional phrase? If it's a preposition, where's the complement?
    – gotube ♦
    Commented Jun 23, 2023 at 17:48

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