to go into business for oneself
6
4.2
- phrasal verb
:
emprender
- After years of working for someone else, she decided to go into business for herself as a freelance consultant.
- decided to go into business for oneself
- wanted to go into business for oneself
- plans to go into business for oneself
Examples
-
Another source of increased demand is a tendency for people to go into business for themselves when jobs are scarce.
Academic text (2003) -
You could go into business for yourself.
Fiction book (2001) -
I could always go into business for myself.
-
I was thinking about going into business for myself.
-
You go into business for yourself.
-
I decided from there I should just go into business for myself.
Blog text (7) -
I'm going into business for myself.
-
I would like to go into business for myself after the company closes my studio.
Blog text (25) -
The studio engineer learned the nuances of home recording and went into business for himself, etc.
Blog text (2) -
After a few years, when he had (in his own estimation) learned the trade, he undertook to go into business for himself in competition with his former employer.
Fiction book (1992)
Synonyms
1
8.4
To start your own business as a professional
How Independent
6
4.2
∞
2.5
Surface Forms
Morphology
go + into + business + for + oneself
The meaning is directly inferable from the parts: 'go into' signals a change of state, 'business' denotes commercial activity, and 'for oneself' specifies acting independently. This compositional pattern (beginning to engage in commerce on one’s own) is cross-linguistically common and would be understandable to a B1 learner who knows the constituent words.
Etymology
Go into business for oneself comes from the simple image of a person leaving a job and walking into their own shop or market stall to sell goods. Here go into is like 'enter', business is the shop, and for oneself means 'not working for someone else', so the phrase means 'to start and run your own business'.