OED has another thing coming
Ben Zimmer
been released online, and one of the additions is our old friend
"another thing coming":
(Under <thing>, n.1)
chiefly Brit. and Irish English. <to have another thing
coming> [arising from misapprehension of <to have another
think coming> s.v. THINK n. 2b] = <to have another think
coming> s.v. THINK n. 2b.
1981 J. SULLIVAN Only Fools & Horses (1999) I. 1st Ser.
Episode 1. 57 Del. If you think I'm staying in a lead-lined
nissan hut with you and Grandad and a chemical bloody khazi
you've got another thing coming. 1994 I. BOTHAM My Autobiogr.
i. 23 After their conversation with Ted they knew they had
another thing coming. 1998 A. O'HANLON Talk of Town (1999)
I. iv. 60 If you think you're getting into my knickers, you
have another thing coming.
I was surprised that they marked it as "chiefly Brit. and Irish
English", considering Areff's survey results from 1999:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=822554d5793b8e2a
By country: think thing knows "something else
coming"
US 22 17 7
Canada 5 2
UK 17 7 4
Ireland 1
Australia 3 3
OED seems to suggest that "another thing..." began its life as a
Rightpondian variant of the Leftpondian "another think..." and then
spread from there. But as Areff has noted, Proquest has cites for
"another thing..." in the New York Times and Washington Post back to
1971 (<http://groups.google.com/groups?th=88b50b356d55bb04>). That's a
full decade earlier than the first OED cite, apparently taken from the
script for an episode of the BBC comedy "Only Fools and Horses" in its
first season (1981). (Only a year later, Birmingham beat combo Judas
Priest would popularize the "thing" variant on both sides of the
Atlantic with their ditty, "You've Got Another Thing Comin'".)
A search on Amazon finds even earlier US citations. Ken Kesey's _One
Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest_, first published in 1962, has this:
"All right, by God, let's just figure out what I'd have
to toss through that screen to bust out. And if you
birds don't think I'd do it if I ever got the urge, then
you got another thing coming."
(p. 108 of the 2002 Viking Penguin edition)
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0670030589/>
Also, the American playwright Robert Ludlam wrote the following in his
1970 play "Bluebeard":
If you ladies think he can marry the whole female sex,
you've got another thing coming.
(pp. 258-9 of _The Mystery of Irma Vep and Other Plays_)
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1559361735/>
But even earlier is a citation from _Final Curtain_ (first published in
1947) by New Zealand-born Dame Ngaio Marsh:
"If you think I'm going to hang round here like a bloody
extra with your family handing me out the bird in fourteen
different positions you've got another thing coming."
(p. 44 of the 1998 St. Martin's Paperbacks edition)
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0312966059/>
Marsh split her time between New Zealand and England, and _Final
Curtain_ (like many of her novels) is set in England. So perhaps
"another thing..." did emerge in the UK first. Still, I think it's
misleading to mark it as "chiefly Brit. and Irish English". Paging Dr.
Sheidlower...
Ben Zimmer
>
> Also, the American playwright Robert Ludlam wrote the following in his
> 1970 play "Bluebeard":
>
> If you ladies think he can marry the whole female sex,
> you've got another thing coming.
> (pp. 258-9 of _The Mystery of Irma Vep and Other Plays_)
> <http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1559361735/>
Sorry, *Charles* Ludlam, not to be confused with Robert *Ludlum*...
Evan Kirshenbaum
> A search on Amazon finds even earlier US citations. Ken Kesey's _One
> Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest_, first published in 1962, has this:
>
> "All right, by God, let's just figure out what I'd have
> to toss through that screen to bust out. And if you
> birds don't think I'd do it if I ever got the urge, then
> you got another thing coming."
> (p. 108 of the 2002 Viking Penguin edition)
> <http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0670030589/>
So even now that they've got all these tools available to them, it
takes an amateur a few minutes to antedate them by 19 years. I'm
disappointed.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |If I am ever forced to make a
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |choice between learning and using
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |win32, or leaving the computer
|industry, let me just say it was
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |nice knowing all of you. :-)
(650)857-7572 | Randal Schwartz
Areff
> Ben Zimmer <bgzi...@midway.uchicago.edu> writes:
>
>> A search on Amazon finds even earlier US citations. Ken Kesey's _One
>> Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest_, first published in 1962, has this:
>>
>> "All right, by God, let's just figure out what I'd have
>> to toss through that screen to bust out. And if you
>> birds don't think I'd do it if I ever got the urge, then
>> you got another thing coming."
>> (p. 108 of the 2002 Viking Penguin edition)
>> <http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0670030589/>
>
> So even now that they've got all these tools available to them, it
> takes an amateur a few minutes to antedate them by 19 years. I'm
> disappointed.
But are you surprised? Lookit how they fail to acknowledge The Fonzie
Thesis[TM] in their entry for "cool". Oy!
--
Robert Lieblich
>
> Ben Zimmer <bgzi...@midway.uchicago.edu> writes:
>
> > A search on Amazon finds even earlier US citations. Ken Kesey's _One
> > Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest_, first published in 1962, has this:
> >
> > "All right, by God, let's just figure out what I'd have
> > to toss through that screen to bust out. And if you
> > birds don't think I'd do it if I ever got the urge, then
> > you got another thing coming."
> > (p. 108 of the 2002 Viking Penguin edition)
> > <http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0670030589/>
>
> So even now that they've got all these tools available to them, it
> takes an amateur a few minutes to antedate them by 19 years. I'm
> disappointed.
I believe Ben forfeited his amateur status when he accepted the AUE
Cup for his smashing victory in the last Summer Doldrums
Competition. If not ... well, he should.
--
Bob Lieblich
Definitely an amateur. Definitely
Ben Zimmer
>
> Ben Zimmer <bgzi...@midway.uchicago.edu> writes:
>
> > A search on Amazon finds even earlier US citations. Ken Kesey's _One
> > Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest_, first published in 1962, has this:
> >
> > "All right, by God, let's just figure out what I'd have
> > to toss through that screen to bust out. And if you
> > birds don't think I'd do it if I ever got the urge, then
> > you got another thing coming."
> > (p. 108 of the 2002 Viking Penguin edition)
> > <http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0670030589/>
>
> So even now that they've got all these tools available to them, it
> takes an amateur a few minutes to antedate them by 19 years. I'm
> disappointed.
Actually more like 34 years, if that Ngaio Marsh citation holds up. (Is
it possible that the 1947 edition of _Torn Curtain_ had "another think
coming" and this was changed to "thing" in a later edition?) In any
case, it's the "amateurs" who are often responsible for tracking down
the antedatings, as they acknowledge every month in their Appeals List:
http://www.oed.com/newsletters/2004-06/appeals.html
Words or phrases which appear on the Appeals List are
those currently being drafted or revised for the OED
for which the documentary evidence is incomplete. Often
these are slang or colloquial items which cannot be
researched in specialist texts and are most likely to
be found by a general reader in non-specialized or
popular literature.
They do note that "it is generally safe to assume that examples found by
searching the Web, using search engines such as Google, will have
already been considered by OED editors." But Amazon's "Search Inside
the Book" feature is new enough to turn up plenty of antedatings missed
by the editors. (Now if Amazon would only fine-tune the search
algorithm...)
K. Edgcombe
Ben Zimmer <bgzi...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>
>But even earlier is a citation from _Final Curtain_ (first published in
>1947) by New Zealand-born Dame Ngaio Marsh:
>
> "If you think I'm going to hang round here like a bloody
> extra with your family handing me out the bird in fourteen
> different positions you've got another thing coming."
> (p. 44 of the 1998 St. Martin's Paperbacks edition)
> <http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0312966059/>
I will check this with my edition, but I'd be very surprised if Marsh wrote
that. I think it's been put in by an editor for the St Martin's edition.
I used to read and reread those books, and "another thing coming" would have
leapt off the page at me.
Possibly some of the other citations are also later editorial "corrections".
But I agree that it seems very odd to cite the phrase as "chiefly UK". I had
never heard of it till I saw it on this newsgroup, and then I believe all the
proponents were Leftpondian. Perhaps someone should tell the OED.
Katy
Mike Page
wrote:
>In article <40C8D17C...@midway.uchicago.edu>,
>Ben Zimmer <bgzi...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>>
>>But even earlier is a citation from _Final Curtain_ (first published in
>>1947) by New Zealand-born Dame Ngaio Marsh:
>>
>> "If you think I'm going to hang round here like a bloody
>> extra with your family handing me out the bird in fourteen
>> different positions you've got another thing coming."
>> (p. 44 of the 1998 St. Martin's Paperbacks edition)
>> <http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0312966059/>
>
>I will check this with my edition, but I'd be very surprised if Marsh wrote
>that. I think it's been put in by an editor for the St Martin's edition.
>
>I used to read and reread those books, and "another thing coming" would have
>leapt off the page at me.
>
Taking time I haven't got to spare off from compiling exam marks,
I observe that on p51 of my 1978 reprint of the Penguin Crime
1958 edition it says quite clearly 'you've got another think
coming'. Looks like you are right, Katy.
Mike Page
Jesse Sheidlower
>been released online, and one of the additions is our old friend
>"another thing coming":
[...]
>OED seems to suggest that "another thing..." began its life as a
>Rightpondian variant of the Leftpondian "another think..." and then
>spread from there. But as Areff has noted, Proquest has cites for
>"another thing..." in the New York Times and Washington Post back to
>1971 (<http://groups.google.com/groups?th=88b50b356d55bb04>). That's a
>full decade earlier than the first OED cite, apparently taken from the
>script for an episode of the BBC comedy "Only Fools and Horses" in its
>first season (1981).
The N.Y. Times cite has already been added to the entry, but
unfortunately it was discovered [i.e. by us, not by R.F.] too
late for inclusion in the initial release of this entry.
>A search on Amazon finds even earlier US citations. Ken Kesey's _One
>Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest_, first published in 1962, has this:
>
> "All right, by God, let's just figure out what I'd have
> to toss through that screen to bust out. And if you
> birds don't think I'd do it if I ever got the urge, then
> you got another thing coming."
> (p. 108 of the 2002 Viking Penguin edition)
Thanks, I'll be getting this checked. But as has been observed
elsewhere in this thread, care is needed to ensure that you're
not getting snookered by a later editorial change.
>Still, I think it's misleading to mark it as "chiefly
>Brit. and Irish English". Paging Dr. Sheidlower...
It's Mr. Sheidlower, but I do agree that this label is
incorrect. Ironically it's the label itself that probably
prevented me from looking at it.
Jesse Sheidlower
Oxford English Dictionary
Jesse Sheidlower
Ben Zimmer <bgzi...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>They do note that "it is generally safe to assume that examples found by
>searching the Web, using search engines such as Google, will have
>already been considered by OED editors." But Amazon's "Search Inside
>the Book" feature is new enough to turn up plenty of antedatings missed
>by the editors. (Now if Amazon would only fine-tune the search
>algorithm...)
We do now use "Search Inside the Book", but it had only just become
available as this entry was being finalized.
Also, the search interface is very much not intended for lexicographic
use, and we have found it almost unusable for finding antedatings of
non-rare terms (because anything even reasonably common will return a
results list too long to go through).
Jesse Sheidlower
Jesse Sheidlower <jes...@panix.com> wrote:
>In article <40C8D17C...@midway.uchicago.edu>,
>Ben Zimmer <bgzi...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>>The latest round of draft entries for the New Edition of the OED has
>>been released online, and one of the additions is our old friend
>>"another thing coming":
>
>>Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest_, first published in 1962, has this:
>>
>> "All right, by God, let's just figure out what I'd have
>> to toss through that screen to bust out. And if you
>> birds don't think I'd do it if I ever got the urge, then
>> you got another thing coming."
>> (p. 108 of the 2002 Viking Penguin edition)
>
>Thanks, I'll be getting this checked.
Er, no, I won't; here's an antedating:
1959 Lethbridge (Alberta, Canada) Herald 22 Aug. 20/3 Please
tell your friends in France that if any more come over here
thinking they can put money in slot machines and get money
galore, they have got another thing coming.
Note that despite the Canadian provenance of the publication,
this reports an English story, and the speaker of the quoted
sentence is an English magistrate.
Jesse Sheidlower
OED
Evan Kirshenbaum
> A search on Amazon finds even earlier US citations. Ken Kesey's _One
> Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest_, first published in 1962, has this:
>
> "All right, by God, let's just figure out what I'd have
> to toss through that screen to bust out. And if you
> birds don't think I'd do it if I ever got the urge, then
> you got another thing coming."
> (p. 108 of the 2002 Viking Penguin edition)
> <http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0670030589/>
Since somebody else has checked the Ngaio Marsh quote, I thought I'd
look that one up, and, sure enough, in my edition it's "another think
coming". That's a Signet paperback. It doesn't seem to be dated, but
it's the 57th printing and it cost $2.25, which would probably put it
late '70s. The cover refers to the movie, so it's at least 1975.
So who corrected it, the Signet editor or the Viking editor? Anybody
got an older copy? Or remember how it was said in the movie?
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |"Algebra? But that's far too
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |difficult for seven-year-olds!"
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |
|"Yes, but I didn't tell them that
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |and so far they haven't found out,"
(650)857-7572 |said Susan.
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Er, no, I won't; here's an antedating:
>
> 1959 Lethbridge (Alberta, Canada) Herald 22 Aug. 20/3 Please
> tell your friends in France that if any more come over here
> thinking they can put money in slot machines and get money
> galore, they have got another thing coming.
>
> Note that despite the Canadian provenance of the publication,
> this reports an English story, and the speaker of the quoted
> sentence is an English magistrate.
But that "they have got" rather than "they've got" makes me suspect
that there was some editing going on, so the "thing" might have been
introduced by the putative Canadian writer rather than the speaker.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |There are two types of people -
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |those who are one of the two types
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |of people, and those who are not.
| Leigh Blue Caldwell
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Ben Zimmer
>
> Ben Zimmer <bgzi...@midway.uchicago.edu> writes:
>
> > A search on Amazon finds even earlier US citations. Ken Kesey's _One
> > Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest_, first published in 1962, has this:
> >
> > "All right, by God, let's just figure out what I'd have
> > to toss through that screen to bust out. And if you
> > birds don't think I'd do it if I ever got the urge, then
> > you got another thing coming."
> > (p. 108 of the 2002 Viking Penguin edition)
> > <http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0670030589/>
>
> Since somebody else has checked the Ngaio Marsh quote, I thought I'd
> look that one up, and, sure enough, in my edition it's "another think
> coming". That's a Signet paperback. It doesn't seem to be dated, but
> it's the 57th printing and it cost $2.25, which would probably put it
> late '70s. The cover refers to the movie, so it's at least 1975.
Phooey... so much for relying on the editions available on Amazon. It's
interesting, though, that the passages by Marsh and Kesey both had
<think> in the original editions, and both were apparently "corrected"
to <thing> by later editors, perhaps in the '80s when the <thing>
variant became widely popularized. This suggests that these editors,
like many AUEers, considered <another thing coming> to be the "standard"
version of the expression.
sage
"Ben Zimmer" <bgzi...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote in message
news:40C8D17C...@midway.uchicago.edu...
> The latest round of draft entries for the New Edition of the OED has
> been released online, and one of the additions is our old friend
> "another thing coming":
>
> (Under <thing>, n.1)
> chiefly Brit. and Irish English. <to have another thing
> coming> [arising from misapprehension of <to have another
> think coming> s.v. THINK n. 2b] = <to have another think
> coming> s.v. THINK n. 2b.
>
> 1981 J. SULLIVAN Only Fools & Horses (1999) I. 1st Ser.
> Episode 1. 57 Del. If you think I'm staying in a lead-lined
> nissan hut
"nissan hut", you say? These huts have nothing to do with japanese motor
cars. It's Nissen in BrE (and Quonset in AmE). The example could be a
transcription error, I suppose.
Cheers, Sage
Dr Robin Bignall
I've followed this thread with some amazement at how 'thing' could be
substituted for 'think' in a phrase that a BrE speaker of my generation
must have learned at his mother's knee. "If you think <whatever>, then
you've got another think coming" is a well-known phrase that tells someone
that he had better think again, because <whatever> is wrong. Similarly, "If
you don't think <whatever>, then you've got another think coming" means
think again, for <whatever> is correct. I would have thought that to be
obvious. What on earth is the 'thing' in 'another thing coming' supposed to
represent? Retribution?
--
wrmst rgrds
Robin Bignall
Hertfordshire
England
Michael West
This issue was pretty much beaten to a pulp
in AUE a couple of years back.
My own theory is that the confusion is related
to the "k" that some speakers of English, both
UK and Australian, use in place of the "g" in
words like "nothing", "anything" and "something."
While I'm at it, I don't remember seeing the
various pronunciations of the second vowel
in "anything" come up for discussion. I have
become aware that some UK idiolects (or
dialects perhaps) pronounce the vowel as
"a", whereas I was taught "ee".
Then, too, there are issues with the first vowel,
which I and many US northern Midwesterners
tend to rhyme with "penny" when we're not being
careful. In the south, it rhymes with "tinny".
--
Michael West
Melbourne, Australia
Dr Robin Bignall
wrote:
So have most other things.
>My own theory is that the confusion is related
>to the "k" that some speakers of English, both
>UK and Australian, use in place of the "g" in
>words like "nothing", "anything" and "something."
>
Some people use 'ff' instead of 'th' in those dialects: nuffink, sumffink,
anyffink, etc. They also often say 'skellington' for skeleton'. But if they
were regular replacers of 'ng' with 'nk', they would presumable get the
original phrase right, for they would say 'ink' in 'think' correctly. That
would still happen even if they completely lacked any understanding of the
original phrase, and thought it was "If you thing that, then you have
another thing coming", which, in itself, makes no sense.
I suspect it's because a great many people have misheard the original
phrase, and can make no sense whatever of 'another think coming'. They do
not see it as the more common "think again", so a meaningful phrase becomes
a meaningless one. That many people who have been taught precise English
try to explain such mistakes away, warts and all, as idiomatic, is most
curious. That some editors got it wrong does not surprise me.
>While I'm at it, I don't remember seeing the
>various pronunciations of the second vowel
>in "anything" come up for discussion. I have
>become aware that some UK idiolects (or
>dialects perhaps) pronounce the vowel as
>"a", whereas I was taught "ee".
>
>Then, too, there are issues with the first vowel,
>which I and many US northern Midwesterners
>tend to rhyme with "penny" when we're not being
>careful. In the south, it rhymes with "tinny".
Pronunciation depends on where one first learned English, I would have
thought.
K. Edgcombe
I would be very very surprised if the original were not "think", misreported by
the Canadian publication.
I've been listening with some attention to the way people use language for the
last fifty years or so, and in the UK I had never, ever, heard or seen "thing"
in this phrase until I met it on a.u.e. a few years ago. The phrase with
"think" is common and unremarkable. I believe the reaction of every other UK
poster on this group was the same as mine - "what? but *nobody* says that,
surely?". Tryin it on a number of friends and relations, of varying ages, I
get the same response. On the other hand, many US/Canadian posters
have argued quite strongly
that "thing" is the correct version and "think" an error.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the expression, to say that "thing" is
"chiefly UK" seems to me a simple error.
Incidentally I checked the Marsh quote and my 1957 paperback has "think", as I
thought. It goes to show that quoting usage in books which have been
republished can be very misleading.
Katy
Michael West
>> to the "k" that some speakers of English, both
>> UK and Australian, use in place of the "g" in
>> words like "nothing", "anything" and "something."
>>
> Some people use 'ff' instead of 'th' in those dialects: nuffink, sumffink,
> anyffink, etc. They also often say 'skellington' for skeleton'. But if they
> were regular replacers of 'ng' with 'nk', they would presumable get the
> original phrase right, for they would say 'ink' in 'think' correctly. That
> would still happen even if they completely lacked any understanding of the
> original phrase, and thought it was "If you thing that, then you have
> another thing coming", which, in itself, makes no sense.
Yes, I think the opposite occurred: people heard
"think" and thought someone was trying to say "thing".
More importantly, there is little, if any, difference
between "thingcoming" and "thinkcoming" in most
versions of spoken English. I don't hear any at all.
Few people pronounce the space between those words.
Michael West
It also supports an objection I have made when
people cite the precedent of some eminent
literary figure for a particular style of punctuation
or even word usage: one cannot always be sure that
one is citing the author and not an editor even a
compositor or typesetter.
Michael West
> So who corrected it, the Signet editor or the Viking editor? Anybody
> got an older copy? Or remember how it was said in the movie?
That's easy. Those who believe the word is "think"
would have heard "think", and those who don't, wouldn't.
Few speakers of American English pause between the
words, and "thingcoming" sounds remarkably similar to
"thinkcoming".
david56
> In article <cactff$smp$1...@panix2.panix.com>,
> Jesse Sheidlower <jes...@panix.com> wrote:
> >
> >Er, no, I won't; here's an antedating:
> >
> >1959 Lethbridge (Alberta, Canada) Herald 22 Aug. 20/3 Please
> >tell your friends in France that if any more come over here
> >thinking they can put money in slot machines and get money
> >galore, they have got another thing coming.
> >
> >Note that despite the Canadian provenance of the publication,
> >this reports an English story, and the speaker of the quoted
> >sentence is an English magistrate.
>
> I would be very very surprised if the original were not "think", misreported by
> the Canadian publication.
>
> I've been listening with some attention to the way people use language for the
> last fifty years or so, and in the UK I had never, ever, heard or seen "thing"
> in this phrase until I met it on a.u.e. a few years ago.
Ditto.
> The phrase with
> "think" is common and unremarkable. I believe the reaction of every other UK
> poster on this group was the same as mine - "what? but *nobody* says that,
> surely?".
True.
> Tryin it on a number of friends and relations, of varying ages, I
> get the same response. On the other hand, many US/Canadian posters
> have argued quite strongly that "thing" is the correct version and "think" an error.
>
> Whatever the rights and wrongs of the expression, to say that "thing" is
> "chiefly UK" seems to me a simple error.
I concur. There's nothing to discuss here in UK usage. In fact, I
don't know why I'm bothering. For posterity, perhaps.
--
David
=====
Areff
> Dr Robin Bignall wrote:
>> substituted for 'think' in a phrase that a BrE speaker of my generation
>> must have learned at his mother's knee. "If you think <whatever>, then
>> you've got another think coming" is a well-known phrase that tells someone
>> that he had better think again, because <whatever> is wrong. Similarly, "If
>> you don't think <whatever>, then you've got another think coming" means
>> think again, for <whatever> is correct. I would have thought that to be
>> obvious. What on earth is the 'thing' in 'another thing coming' supposed to
>> represent? Retribution?
>
> This issue was pretty much beaten to a pulp
> in AUE a couple of years back.
>
> My own theory is that the confusion is related
> to the "k" that some speakers of English, both
> UK and Australian, use in place of the "g" in
> words like "nothing", "anything" and "something."
I don't think any such theory is necessary.
"Think coming" = /TINk kVmIN/
"Thing coming" = /TIN kVmIN/
The only difference is the extra /k/ in the first one. There's still a
/k/ in the second.
> While I'm at it, I don't remember seeing the
> various pronunciations of the second vowel
> in "anything" come up for discussion. I have
> become aware that some UK idiolects (or
> dialects perhaps) pronounce the vowel as
> "a", whereas I was taught "ee".
We've discussed this. I believe I hear BrE 'anything' as /En@TIN/, but
they insist that they say /EnITIN/. The /I/ vs. /i/ difference is enough
to be detectable to us there, I guess.
> Then, too, there are issues with the first vowel,
> which I and many US northern Midwesterners
> tend to rhyme with "penny" when we're not being
> careful. In the south, it rhymes with "tinny".
That's just the pin/pen merger, which we signify with the acronym PIP[tm].
More precisely, in the south, among PIP speakers (and there are lots of
non-Southern PIP speakers now), "tenny" and "tinny" are homophones.
--
Areff
> I've been listening with some attention to the way people use language for the
> last fifty years or so, and in the UK I had never, ever, heard or seen "thing"
> in this phrase until I met it on a.u.e. a few years ago. The phrase with
> "think" is common and unremarkable.
But most speakers, I suspect, simply can't hear the difference between the
two versions in speech. Again, I use ASCII IPA to point this out:
/TINk kVmIN/ "think coming"
/TIN kVmIN/ "thing coming"
In rapid speech I would guess that there simply is no audible difference.
> I believe the reaction of every other UK
> poster on this group was the same as mine - "what? but *nobody* says that,
> surely?".
No -- see the AUE survey I did a few years ago. There were indeed UK
speakers who knew the expression as "thing"; they were younger-generation
speakers.
> Whatever the rights and wrongs of the expression, to say that "thing" is
> "chiefly UK" seems to me a simple error.
I agree.
--
Areff
> K. Edgcombe typed thus:
>>
>> I've been listening with some attention to the way people use language for the
>> last fifty years or so, and in the UK I had never, ever, heard or seen "thing"
>> in this phrase until I met it on a.u.e. a few years ago.
>
> Ditto.
>
>> The phrase with
>> "think" is common and unremarkable. I believe the reaction of every other UK
>> poster on this group was the same as mine - "what? but *nobody* says that,
>> surely?".
>
> True.
>
>> Tryin it on a number of friends and relations, of varying ages, I
>> get the same response. On the other hand, many US/Canadian posters
>> have argued quite strongly that "thing" is the correct version and "think" an error.
>>
>> Whatever the rights and wrongs of the expression, to say that "thing" is
>> "chiefly UK" seems to me a simple error.
>
> I concur. There's nothing to discuss here in UK usage. In fact, I
> don't know why I'm bothering. For posterity, perhaps.
How do you account for the results of the AUE survey? For UK
participants:
By birth year: UK only
think thing knows "something
else coming"
1939-1947 8
1948-1956 5
1957-1965 2 1
1966-1974 4 3
1975-1983 2 2 1
Most UK participants born after 1965 knew the expression as "thing".
We could always do another survey if anyone's interested. :-)
--
david56
I don't remember this survey, but it flies in the face of my own
experience.
--
David
=====
Scott Wood
> More importantly, there is little, if any, difference
> between "thingcoming" and "thinkcoming" in most
> versions of spoken English. I don't hear any at all.
> Few people pronounce the space between those words.
I pronounce the first vowel differently in that pair; "think" has a
plain old [I], while "thing" has something like [Ii], which I
generally perceive as /i/ rather than /I/. Most other "-ink" words
have the "thing" vowel, though.
-Scott
Raymond S. Wise
news:uc8oc0d82rbijcs64...@4ax.com...
Your use of English here would appear to be less than precise. It is not
"explaining a mistake away" to say that "if you think that, you've got
another thing coming" is an idiom, it is *explaining* it. What could it be
other than an idiom, since it is *not* a mistake?[1] It is, for example, the
idiomatic usage which I learned when I was a child--I later changed to
"...you've got another think coming"[2] but that does not make the other way
of saying it any less of an idiom. And an editor should not alter an idiom
without a damn good reason for doing so. In the case of a novel especially,
the usage used should reflect what the character or narrator would be
expected to say.
>
> >While I'm at it, I don't remember seeing the
> >various pronunciations of the second vowel
> >in "anything" come up for discussion. I have
> >become aware that some UK idiolects (or
> >dialects perhaps) pronounce the vowel as
> >"a", whereas I was taught "ee".
> >
> >Then, too, there are issues with the first vowel,
> >which I and many US northern Midwesterners
> >tend to rhyme with "penny" when we're not being
> >careful. In the south, it rhymes with "tinny".
>
> Pronunciation depends on where one first learned English, I would have
> thought.
Note:
[1] It is an idiom which started as a mistake, but every natural language
has plenty of those.
[2] If I said "...you've got another thing coming" today, I certainly
wouldn't change it.
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com
Dr Robin Bignall
>K. Edgcombe wrote:
>> I've been listening with some attention to the way people use language for the
>> last fifty years or so, and in the UK I had never, ever, heard or seen "thing"
>> in this phrase until I met it on a.u.e. a few years ago. The phrase with
>> "think" is common and unremarkable.
>
>But most speakers, I suspect, simply can't hear the difference between the
>two versions in speech. Again, I use ASCII IPA to point this out:
>
>/TINk kVmIN/ "think coming"
>/TIN kVmIN/ "thing coming"
>
>In rapid speech I would guess that there simply is no audible difference.
>
You imply that because there is no audible difference, all of these
speakers are content to spout nonsense? Sheesh!
>> I believe the reaction of every other UK
>> poster on this group was the same as mine - "what? but *nobody* says that,
>> surely?".
>
>No -- see the AUE survey I did a few years ago. There were indeed UK
>speakers who knew the expression as "thing"; they were younger-generation
>speakers.
>
That tells me that people born after 1965 simply don't read as much as we
did when we were young. They probably picked things up from the telly and
repeated them parrot fashion, without any understanding.
>> Whatever the rights and wrongs of the expression, to say that "thing" is
>> "chiefly UK" seems to me a simple error.
>
>I agree.
--
wrmst rgrds
Robin Bignall
Hertfordshire
England
Dr Robin Bignall
wrote:
>Dr Robin Bignall wrote:
I just commented on this in a reply to Franke. 'Another thing coming' in
that context makes no sense at all.
Dr Robin Bignall
I'm aware of your feelings on this sort of thing Raymond, but the thought
of intelligent, educated people continuing to promulgate a mistake, and
explaining Joe Sixpack's usage as mere 'idiom', makes me despair. Of course
most natural languages have such mistakes, for the simple reason that most
people in the world are not very well educated. I realise that I'm sounding
a bit like Eric walker, but he's not wrong about this sort of misuse.
Michael West
> That tells me that people born after 1965 simply don't read as much as we
> did when we were young.
Yabbut we all knew that already. Reading among
kids has been in steady decline for longer than that.
> They probably picked things up from the telly and
> repeated them parrot fashion, without any understanding.
Kids repeat things they hear without understanding,
whether from TV, pop songs, peers or parents.
Besides, "another thing coming" is not "facially" less
"logical" than "another think coming". The latter, in
fact, relies on a sophisticated recognition of jocular
language use that few kids will have mastered.
Have a think about it.
Sara Lorimer
> That tells me that people born after 1965 simply don't read as much as we
> did when we were young.
"We"? How old is the average AUEer, anyway?
--
SML
http://pirate-women.com
Skitt
A dictionary can be of help.
MWCD10:
Main Entry: 2think
Function: noun
: an act of thinking <has another think coming>
--
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
www.geocities.com/opus731/
Skitt
> Dr Robin Bignall wrote:
>> That tells me that people born after 1965 simply don't read as much
>> as we did when we were young.
>
> "We"? How old is the average AUEer, anyway?
Don't ask.
Raymond S. Wise
[...]
> I'm aware of your feelings on this sort of thing Raymond, but the thought
> of intelligent, educated people continuing to promulgate a mistake, and
> explaining Joe Sixpack's usage as mere 'idiom', makes me despair. Of
course
> most natural languages have such mistakes, for the simple reason that most
> people in the world are not very well educated. I realise that I'm
sounding
> a bit like Eric walker, but he's not wrong about this sort of misuse.
An idiom is, as MWCD11 puts is, a usage which has "a meaning that cannot be
derived from the conjoined meanings of its elements." Logically, it is an
impossibility for an idiom to be a mistake, since it ceases to be a mistake
at the very point that it becomes an idiom. Assuming that you are not
identifying "mistake" in your above message with "nonstandard usage," then
it is simply perverse to believe that the idioms of uneducated people are
somehow "more mistaken" than the idioms of educated people. You can't
protect your position by saying "Oh, it's just my opinion," because it is a
matter of logic, not opinion, and your position is logically indefensible.
None of this has anything to do with the question of whether "...you've got
another thing coming" is a standard usage or not. That is a separate
question from whether it is an idiom.
Michael West
> Michael West wrote:
>> Kids repeat things they hear without understanding,
>> whether from TV, pop songs, peers or parents.
>>
>> Besides, "another thing coming" is not "facially" less
>> "logical" than "another think coming". The latter, in
>> fact, relies on a sophisticated recognition of jocular
>> language use that few kids will have mastered.
>>
>> Have a think about it.
>
> A dictionary can be of help.
The dictionary that children carry around in their pockets
for looking up familiar words?
Skitt
I guess not, and therein lies the problem. I shudder to think what
influence rap has on those poor souls.
Maria Conlon
> I've been listening with some attention to the way people use
> language for the last fifty years or so, and in the UK I had never,
> ever, heard or seen "thing" in this phrase until I met it on a.u.e. a
> few years ago. The phrase with "think" is common and unremarkable.
> I believe the reaction of every other UK poster on this group was the
> same as mine - "what? but *nobody* says that, surely?". Tryin it on
> a number of friends and relations, of varying ages, I get the same
> response. On the other hand, many US/Canadian posters
> have argued quite strongly
> that "thing" is the correct version and "think" an error.
I don't recall which posters, by nationality, were supporting "think"
and which were supporting "thing." However, I see that Areff has posted
some survey results about this topic.
In any case, I would say that individual aue posters are not
representative of the overall population of the country they are from.
Think-er,
Maria Conlon, Southeast Michigan, USA.
A very great part of the mischiefs
that vex this world arises from words. [Edmund Burke]
Maria Conlon
or thing] coming"):
> Most UK participants born after 1965 knew the expression as "thing".
>
> We could always do another survey if anyone's interested. :-)
If a new survey materializes, you may put me in the "think" column.
Thank you, Areff.
Maria Conlon, Southeast Michigan, USA.
Born 1943 in east Tennessee.
Areff
> Dr Robin Bignall wrote:
>
>> That tells me that people born after 1965 simply don't read as much as we
>> did when we were young.
>
> "We"? How old is the average AUEer, anyway?
Ross Howard.
--
Areff
> K. Edgcombe wrote:
>
>> I've been listening with some attention to the way people use
>> language for the last fifty years or so, and in the UK I had never,
>> ever, heard or seen "thing" in this phrase until I met it on a.u.e. a
>> few years ago. The phrase with "think" is common and unremarkable.
>> I believe the reaction of every other UK poster on this group was the
>> same as mine - "what? but *nobody* says that, surely?". Tryin it on
>> a number of friends and relations, of varying ages, I get the same
>> response. On the other hand, many US/Canadian posters
>> have argued quite strongly
>> that "thing" is the correct version and "think" an error.
>
> I don't recall which posters, by nationality, were supporting "think"
> and which were supporting "thing." However, I see that Areff has posted
> some survey results about this topic.
>
> In any case, I would say that individual aue posters are not
> representative of the overall population of the country they are from.
True, but in this sort of case I'd expect that "thing"-ers are
disproportionately underrepresented in AUE.
Think-ers, you cannot fight against the future. Time is on us thing-ers'
side.
--
Skitt
Yeah, there seems to be a fairly snmart bunch here, much unlike in some
other gorups.
> Think-ers, you cannot fight against the future. Time is on us
> thing-ers' side.
That might be true, what with the general avoidance of reading and such by
the TV watchers. Sad, really.
Maria Conlon
> Dr Robin Bignall wrote:
>
>> That tells me that people born after 1965 simply don't read as much
>> as we did when we were young.
>
> "We"? How old is the average AUEer, anyway?
Now, there's a survey I'd be willing to conduct.
Details:
*Location* (Required; providing more than just the country will be
helpful)
*Year of birth* (Required; please don't use Roman numerals <smile>)
*Name* or AUE name or simply your email address (No names will be used
in reporting the totals and averages)
*Other* (Optional; any other info you feel is relevant to the survey)
Please send your response to: mariaco...@hotmail.com
(Skitt, I know how old you are.)
(Areff, I don't know how old Ross is.)
Maria Conlon, Southeast Michigan, USA
Ross Howard
b. 1957, a Sputnik Sprog (TM), Elvis's "Teddy Bear" was No. 1.
Too young for the Isle of Wight/Woodstock. First car sex in a Mini
Traveller (wanna see the scars?). Became eligible to vote around the
time of US Watergate/UK power cuts and three-day Week Was just the
right age (19) for punk and its aftermath, so been there done that
(saw the Clash at the Rainbow, the Police and Dire Straits in pubs,
etc.). Was just the right age (mid-20s) and in the right profession
(advertising) to be a yuppie, so been there done that (drove a Golf
[then-AmE: Rabbit] convertible until the dashboard fell off). Felt
suffienctly embarrassed about my upward mobility to attend
pro-Sandinista fund-raisers organised by Harold Pinter's mates (not a
Great Night Out, perhaps, but a great place to meet women, it turned
out) Saw the bursting of the late-'80s bubble and certain downward
mobility (read "redundancy") looming, so upped and emigrated to a
Proper Country.
Although I probably *am* roughly the average age of AUEers, are there
actually that many of us in our mid-forties? I can only think of a
few. Most of the others seem to be ten years or more younger (e.g.
RF, Simon... [where he?]) or older (e.g. Mike Lyle, TC, Bob L....).
--
Ross Howard
Raymond S. Wise
news:2j482lF...@uni-berlin.de...
This seems as good a place as any to make the following point: A child who
was unfamiliar with the idiom in question, and who heard a speaker using the
"...you've got another thing coming" and interpreted it as being "...you've
got another think coming" would be making an error! That it so happens that
there is a usage "...you've got another think coming" would not make it any
less of an error. Even checking the dictionary would not really excuse the
error, because the speaker said "thing," not "think."
By "error," as in my reply to Robin, I am not discussing nonstandard usage,
but what linguists mean by linguistic error, in this case a
mishearing/misunderstanding of a speaker by a hearer.
I readily acknowledge that a hearer who mistakes "...you've got another
think coming" for "...you've got another thing coming" has also made an
error. However, if he, as is the case with most "thing"-speakers," learned
the idiom from another "thing"-speaker, his own use of the idiom is just
that: A use of an idiomatic expression and by no stretch of the imagination
a linguistic error.
Ben Zimmer
>
> On 13 Jun 2004 13:27:54 GMT, Areff <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>
> >K. Edgcombe wrote:
> >> I've been listening with some attention to the way people use language for the
> >> last fifty years or so, and in the UK I had never, ever, heard or seen "thing"
> >> in this phrase until I met it on a.u.e. a few years ago. The phrase with
> >> "think" is common and unremarkable.
> >
> >But most speakers, I suspect, simply can't hear the difference between the
> >two versions in speech. Again, I use ASCII IPA to point this out:
> >
> >/TINk kVmIN/ "think coming"
> >/TIN kVmIN/ "thing coming"
> >
> >In rapid speech I would guess that there simply is no audible difference.
> >
> You imply that because there is no audible difference, all of these
> speakers are content to spout nonsense? Sheesh!
>
> >> I believe the reaction of every other UK
> >> poster on this group was the same as mine - "what? but *nobody* says that,
> >> surely?".
> >
> >No -- see the AUE survey I did a few years ago. There were indeed UK
> >speakers who knew the expression as "thing"; they were younger-generation
> >speakers.
> >
> That tells me that people born after 1965 simply don't read as much as we
> did when we were young. They probably picked things up from the telly and
> repeated them parrot fashion, without any understanding.
I'll merely note that perhaps the watershed moment in the popularization
of the <thing> variant was Judas Priest's 1982 release of "You've Got
Another Thing Comin'", a song credited to Rob Halford (b. 1951,
Warwickshire), K. K. Downing (b. 1951, West Bromwich), and Glenn Tipton
(b. 1948, Blackheath). So it looks like UK boomers need to shoulder
some of the blame for this supposed "nonsense".
Simon Hosie
> If a new survey materializes, you may put me in the "think" column.
'think', New Zeland, 1977.
I wasn't aware of the 'thing' variant until I saw this thread. Hell, I
wasn't aware of 'could care less' until I saw it here, but now it's all
over the place.
Maria Conlon
I've heard from several people in the US (and one in Oz) but none from
other spots. Is there a problem with sending something to a Hotmail.com
address? If so... here is my other email address: maria dot c-b at
sbcglobal dot net (just put that together).
I did pick up information (from the thread) about Simon Hosie and Ross
Howard, but would like confirmation that they wish to be included in the
age survey.
Thank you, and have a good day, afternoon, evening...
Maria Conlon
Simon Hosie
> I did pick up information (from the thread) about Simon Hosie and Ross
> Howard, but would like confirmation that they wish to be included in the
> age survey.
Sure, why not. That's Christchurch, New Zealand.
I never used to have the nerve to email a hotmail account because they
were always at the centre of so many stories about spam harvesters and
the like, and I'm not sure an email from a hotmail account would survive
the spam filters.
Jonathan Jordan
news:2j4auiF...@uni-berlin.de...
<snip>
>
> Think-ers, you cannot fight against the future. Time is on us
thing-ers'
> side.
Nah. Just a Post-Tet blip.
Jonathan (1976, "think")
Areff
Oh yeah? Let's see what Young Joey says! Bwahahaha!
--
david56
That'll be me. Hence my nom-de-Usenet.
--
David
=====
Skitt
Linguistically speaking, of course.
Bob Cunningham
<bgzi...@midway.uchicago.edu> said:
> The latest round of draft entries for the New Edition of the OED has
> been released online, and one of the additions is our old friend
> "another thing coming":
> (Under <thing>, n.1)
> chiefly Brit. and Irish English. <to have another thing
> coming> [arising from misapprehension of <to have another
> think coming> s.v. THINK n. 2b] = <to have another think
> coming> s.v. THINK n. 2b.
> 1981 J. SULLIVAN Only Fools & Horses (1999) I. 1st Ser.
> Episode 1. 57 Del. If you think I'm staying in a lead-lined
> nissan hut with you and Grandad and a chemical bloody khazi
> you've got another thing coming. 1994 I. BOTHAM My Autobiogr.
> i. 23 After their conversation with Ted they knew they had
> another thing coming. 1998 A. O'HANLON Talk of Town (1999)
> I. iv. 60 If you think you're getting into my knickers, you
> have another thing coming.
> I was surprised that they marked it as "chiefly Brit. and Irish
> English",
[Interesting material omitted]
Regardless of their faulty research, I find it gratifying to
read their
arising from misapprehension of <to have another
think coming>
I have no doubt at all that that's a valid conclusion. I
would find it extremely hard to imagine that "another thing
coming" could have entered the language in any other way.
Areff
> Regardless of their faulty research, I find it gratifying to
> read their
>
> arising from misapprehension of <to have another
> think coming>
>
> I have no doubt at all that that's a valid conclusion. I
> would find it extremely hard to imagine that "another thing
> coming" could have entered the language in any other way.
I think it could have originated as a knowing jocularism by speakers
familiar with the 'think' version. I'm not saying that that's more likely
than the 'misapprehension' theory.
Cf. "could care less" for "couldn't care less". Some people in AUE
(Hi Kirsh!) have argued that "could care less" originated as an
intentional, ironic variation on "couldn't care less". I'm really not
convinced on that one.
--
Mike Lyle
> Ross Howard typed thus:
[...]
> > Although I probably *am* roughly the average age of AUEers, are there
> > actually that many of us in our mid-forties? I can only think of a
> > few. Most of the others seem to be ten years or more younger (e.g.
> > RF, Simon... [where he?]) or older (e.g. Mike Lyle, TC, Bob L....).
>
> That'll be me. Hence my nom-de-Usenet.
I can't make any such exciting claims as Ross; I was 19 on the 1962
Aldermaston March, saw Neil Harvey break a bat for Aus, nothing else
dramatic, really.
Mike.
Al in Dallas
[snip]
> But are you surprised? Lookit how they fail to acknowledge The Fonzie
> Thesis[TM] in their entry for "cool". Oy!
Donna really oughta spank you for that.
--
Al in Dallas
Dr Robin Bignall
I have this vision of the past 50 or so years, during which adages that
have been around for centuries are passed incorrectly from father to son
unto several generations, just because someone misheard something and it
caught on. I expect to read "A stitch in time saves mine" and "Look before
you weep" real soon now. AUE is the only place in which I've ever seen a
justification (that it's idiomatic) for "I could care less" (which means
the exact opposite of what it's supposed to mean) and other, similarly
mistaken adages. I know everybody knows what these things mean, so they
don't think about them, but that's the point: they *don't* think about
them, and justification of such mistakes seems to me to be a
descriptivistic step too far. Excusing such things by calling them idioms,
just because some percentage of the population neither knows nor cares what
the words it uses means, is like building houses on quicksand. This sort of
thing really does get under my skin, possibly because I was born and grew
up before the advent of television and pop culture, so that my generation
had to read, and to listen carefully to the radio.
--
wrmst rgrds
Robin Bignall
Hertfordshire
England
Al in Dallas
[snip OED's new entry under "thing" for "another thing coming"]
> I've followed this thread with some amazement at how 'thing' could be
> substituted for 'think' in a phrase that a BrE speaker of my generation
> must have learned at his mother's knee. "If you think <whatever>, then
> you've got another think coming" is a well-known phrase that tells someone
> that he had better think again, because <whatever> is wrong. Similarly, "If
> you don't think <whatever>, then you've got another think coming" means
> think again, for <whatever> is correct. I would have thought that to be
> obvious. What on earth is the 'thing' in 'another thing coming' supposed to
> represent? Retribution?
I've always been mystified by this claim of a lack of meaning for
"another thing coming." It's always seemed obvious to me that the
other thing coming is something other than the outcome you
expect, i.e. "another thing coming" is equivalent to "something
else occurring." In other words, "Boy, are you in for a
surprise."
--
Al in Dallas
Dr Robin Bignall
I've never heard the song or seen the lyrics, but if that was based on the
adage, then it's either ironic or clueless.
Skitt
> Dr Robin Bignall wrote:
That's all well and good, but it is not the same as "another think coming",
which means that the original thought that produced an idea, because of that
idea's non-validity, will have to be rethought. There is nothing in the
original idiom about any things, just thoughts.
Dr Robin Bignall
<mplsra...@gbronline.com> wrote:
>"Dr Robin Bignall" <docr...@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
>news:1ikpc0tfm332uphgn...@4ax.com...
>
>
>[...]
>
>
>> I'm aware of your feelings on this sort of thing Raymond, but the thought
>> of intelligent, educated people continuing to promulgate a mistake, and
>> explaining Joe Sixpack's usage as mere 'idiom', makes me despair. Of
>course
>> most natural languages have such mistakes, for the simple reason that most
>> people in the world are not very well educated. I realise that I'm
>sounding
>> a bit like Eric walker, but he's not wrong about this sort of misuse.
>
>
>An idiom is, as MWCD11 puts is, a usage which has "a meaning that cannot be
>derived from the conjoined meanings of its elements." Logically, it is an
>impossibility for an idiom to be a mistake, since it ceases to be a mistake
>at the very point that it becomes an idiom.
I used the word 'mistake' simply because you had used it in your note [1]
to a previous reply concerning this 'think/thing' business.
<quote>
Note:
[1] It is an idiom which started as a mistake, but every natural language
has plenty of those.
<end quote>
>Assuming that you are not
>identifying "mistake" in your above message with "nonstandard usage," then
>it is simply perverse to believe that the idioms of uneducated people are
>somehow "more mistaken" than the idioms of educated people. You can't
>protect your position by saying "Oh, it's just my opinion," because it is a
>matter of logic, not opinion, and your position is logically indefensible.
>
It is not a non-standard usage, it's an error which has turned an old adage
into nonsense. It is, in my opinion, perverse to explain such things away
by calling them idioms, a practice that is just part of the laxity that has
swept the world during the past few decades; laxity in speech, dress,
behaviour, and so on. Freedom of expression does not imply letting
standards slip.
>None of this has anything to do with the question of whether "...you've got
>another thing coming" is a standard usage or not. That is a separate
>question from whether it is an idiom.
Michael West
> Bob Cunningham wrote:
>> Regardless of their faulty research, I find it gratifying to
>> read their
>>
>> arising from misapprehension of <to have another
>> think coming>
>>
>> I have no doubt at all that that's a valid conclusion. I
>> would find it extremely hard to imagine that "another thing
>> coming" could have entered the language in any other way.
>
> I think it could have originated as a knowing jocularism by speakers
> familiar with the 'think' version. I'm not saying that that's more likely
> than the 'misapprehension' theory.
And where eggzackly is the jocularity? "Having a think" is
jocular. "Another thing coming" is just stoopid.
> Cf. "could care less" for "couldn't care less". Some people in AUE
> (Hi Kirsh!) have argued that "could care less" originated as an
> intentional, ironic variation on "couldn't care less". I'm really not
> convinced on that one.
<sigh>
--
Michael West
Melbourne, Australia
"I'll have just the one kudo, thanks."
-- Dennis Callegari
Bob Cunningham
> Bob Cunningham wrote:
> > Regardless of their faulty research, I find it gratifying to
> > read their
> > arising from misapprehension of <to have another
> > think coming>
> > I have no doubt at all that that's a valid conclusion. I
> > would find it extremely hard to imagine that "another thing
> > coming" could have entered the language in any other way.
> I think it could have originated as a knowing jocularism by speakers
> familiar with the 'think' version. I'm not saying that that's more likely
> than the 'misapprehension' theory.
Good point. Thank you. Let me amend my statement to say I
would find it extremely hard to imagine that "another thing
coming" -- in the sense we're discussing -- could have
entered the language in any other way than as an outgrowth,
inadvertent or intentional, of "another think coming".
Scott Wood
> Al in Dallas wrote:
>> I've always been mystified by this claim of a lack of meaning for
>> "another thing coming." It's always seemed obvious to me that the
>> other thing coming is something other than the outcome you
>> expect, i.e. "another thing coming" is equivalent to "something
>> else occurring." In other words, "Boy, are you in for a
>> surprise."
>
> That's all well and good, but it is not the same as "another think coming",
> which means that the original thought that produced an idea, because of that
> idea's non-validity, will have to be rethought. There is nothing in the
> original idiom about any things, just thoughts.
So then "another thing coming" is a slightly different idiom than
"another think coming", with a different literal meaning but
applicable to similar situations. That's not the same as it being a
set of words that has no meaning except as a corruption of the
original idiom (such as "could care less" is), as some posters in
this thread seem to claim it to be.
-Scott
Carmen L. Abruzzi
Shouldn't it be "...you've got another thought coming" or maybe "...you
should think again"? "Think" isn't a noun.
R H Draney
>
>That's all well and good, but it is not the same as "another think coming",
>which means that the original thought that produced an idea, because of that
>idea's non-validity, will have to be rethought. There is nothing in the
>original idiom about any things, just thoughts.
Ooh, now you're going to have the reificationists on your case!...r
Scott Wood
> It is not a non-standard usage, it's an error which has turned an old adage
> into nonsense.
No, it's turned it into a different idiom. It has meaning, both
idiomatic and literal; you merely choose to ignore it because it's
not the idiom *you* use.
> It is, in my opinion, perverse to explain such things away
> by calling them idioms, a practice that is just part of the laxity that has
> swept the world during the past few decades; laxity in speech, dress,
> behaviour, and so on. Freedom of expression does not imply letting
> standards slip.
So I expect you'll be speaking nothing but Proto-Indo-European from
now on, as to the "standard" speakers of those days what you utter
now would surely be nonsense derived from numerous errors over the
years? I'd hope you wouldn't be so perverse as to explain the
changes away as merely being a different "language".
I'm sure PIE speakers would have found your "dress [and] behaviour"
to be quite absurd and non-standard, as well.
-Scott
Skitt
There's a problem that you are overlooking -- the "things" version starts
out talking about thoughts (if you think that ...), but finishes with
something about some kind of unspecified thing. In other words, there
doesn't seem to be any connection.
Maria Conlon
From M-W online:
Main Entry: 2think
Function: noun
: an act of thinking <has another think coming>
Maria Conlon
It isn't safe to say "isn't" any more, is it?
Robert Lieblich
[ ... ]
> I have this vision of the past 50 or so years, during which adages that
> have been around for centuries are passed incorrectly from father to son
> unto several generations, just because someone misheard something and it
> caught on. I expect to read "A stitch in time saves mine" and "Look before
> you weep" real soon now. AUE is the only place in which I've ever seen a
> justification (that it's idiomatic) for "I could care less" (which means
> the exact opposite of what it's supposed to mean) and other, similarly
> mistaken adages.
I'd like to say a few words (an anomaly right there, no?) about the
following: "You can't have your cake and eat it." That's how you
hear it, almost invariably, in the US, and I'd wager it's the
prevalent form in the UK and elsewhere by now. Fowler pointed out
that you can both have your cake and eat it -- you just can't do so
simultaneously. First you have it, then you eat it. What you can't
do is both eat it and have it, because if you eat it you no longer
have it. And if you trace it back, I believe you will find that the
"eat - have" form was the original. (I tried it once, and that's
the result I got.)
I'm sure that if anyone bothers today to think about the expression,
they come up with the "not simultaneously" explanation and think no
more. But there *is* more to it than that, and the current version
is somehow weaker than the original.
> I know everybody knows what these things mean, so they
> don't think about them, but that's the point: they *don't* think about
> them, and justification of such mistakes seems to me to be a
> descriptivistic step too far. Excusing such things by calling them idioms,
> just because some percentage of the population neither knows nor cares what
> the words it uses means, is like building houses on quicksand. This sort of
> thing really does get under my skin, possibly because I was born and grew
> up before the advent of television and pop culture, so that my generation
> had to read, and to listen carefully to the radio.
I am similarly annoyed, but whaddaya gonna do? Every time I bitch
about this sort of "illiteracy," I evoke a bunch of retorts saying
"What a snob you are, Liebs; I've been saying it that way all my
life." I don't think I'm a snob, but things like "another thing
coming" do activate my recessive snob genes.
Just remember, Robin, Young Joey will be torturing the language long
after we've passed on to That Great Lexicographic Circle in the sky.
--
Bob Lieblich
Okay, I *am* a snob
Robert Lieblich
[ ... ]
> I've always been mystified by this claim of a lack of meaning for
> "another thing coming." It's always seemed obvious to me that the
> other thing coming is something other than the outcome you
> expect, i.e. "another thing coming" is equivalent to "something
> else occurring." In other words, "Boy, are you in for a
> surprise."
Post-hoc rationalization, Al. I suppose it explains why people
saying "another thing coming" don't realize how idiotic it really
is. See my post on "eat your cake and have it." It's still far
inferior to the ingenious "another think coming." If you're going
to use a cliche, at least use the version with a bit of
inventiveness and humor.
On second thought, "idiotic" may be too strong a word. How about
"imbecilic" instead?
--
Bob Lieblich
Moronic?
Skitt
Ah, you must have missed one of my previous posts. I'll repeat what I
quoted there:
M-W Online:
Main Entry: 2think
Function: noun
: an act of thinking <has another think coming>
The hard-copy MWCD10 dates it to 1834, so it's been around for a while.
I agree that "thought" would be the expected form of the noun, but now and
then ppeople form idioms that use other forms.
Michael West
> AUE is the only place in which I've ever seen a
> justification (that it's idiomatic) for "I could care less" (which means
> the exact opposite of what it's supposed to mean) and other, similarly
> mistaken adages.
Doc, I guess you had to grow up, as I did,
in a family and a neighborhood where the
"original" literal expression was *known* by
everyone to be "couldn't care less", but where
we kids deliberately ironified (TM) it, just as
we did for many other received expressions, by
turning it around. It was AFTER that process that
some people, hearing the ironified (TM) version
and not comprehending its linguistic provenance,
mistook it for a literal expression.
> This sort of
> thing really does get under my skin, possibly because I was born and grew
> up before the advent of television and pop culture, so that my generation
> had to read, and to listen carefully to the radio.
Me too.
Don Aitken
wrote:
The first datable event I can remember was the funeral of George VI,
when I was five. There was no TV in our area then, but it made a great
impression on me that our teacher had a radio tuned to the funeral, so
that, at the appropriate moment, she could go out into the corridor
and ring a handbell, which was the signal for all the kids in the
other classrooms to stand in silence for however long it was. The
thing that impressed me was not the ceremony, but the presence of the
radio. To me a radio had always been purely for entertainment, and
having one on in school seemed contrary to the natural order of
things.
I was just the right age to he a hippie, though, and managed to wind
up the fellows of my Cambridge college in some very satisfactory ways.
My best discovery was that, although you had to wear a gown when
dining in Hall, and a jacket under it, no rule specified what, if
anything, you wore on your feet. My tutor finally put a stop to the
barefootedness by wheeling out the ultimate weapon - "The college
servants have complained". I'm sure it was true; they were a much more
conservative bunch than the academic staff.
--
Don Aitken
Mail to the addresses given in the headers is no longer being
read. To mail me, substitute "clara.co.uk" for "freeuk.com".
Michael West
> Shouldn't it be "...you've got another thought coming" or maybe "...you
> should think again"? "Think" isn't a noun.
You'd better have a think about that.
Meanwhile, I'm going to get some eats.
Michael West
> ... Fowler pointed out
> that you can both have your cake and eat it -- you just can't do so
> simultaneously.
Which is expressed better in the form I am familiar
with, which has a "too" at the end.
Some people, myself included, had to have this saying
explicated because of the ambiguity of the verb "have".
"Having cake" can mean "eating cake", and that's how
I understood this (apparently nonsensical) proverb until
someone set me straight. (Of course you can have it and
eat it, I thought. It's the same thing!")
Raymond S. Wise
I have been a "...you have another thing coming" speaker and a "...you have
another think coming" speaker, and I agree with "Al in Dallas" that the
phrase means, essentially, "Boy, are you in for a surprise." Changing which
version I used did not in the slightest affect how I used it or alter its
meaning.
"Al in Dallas" may very well disagree with the following: The difference
between the "think"/"thing" versions is like that between "I couldn't care
less" and "I could care less": The meaning of the variants is identical, and
assertions that there is some difference in meaning are misguided.
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com
Scott Wood
> Scott Wood wrote:
>> So then "another thing coming" is a slightly different idiom than
>> "another think coming", with a different literal meaning but
>> applicable to similar situations. That's not the same as it being a
>> set of words that has no meaning except as a corruption of the
>> original idiom (such as "could care less" is), as some posters in
>> this thread seem to claim it to be.
>
> There's a problem that you are overlooking -- the "things" version starts
> out talking about thoughts (if you think that ...), but finishes with
> something about some kind of unspecified thing. In other words, there
> doesn't seem to be any connection.
That's only a problem if you insist on applying the same structure to
both idioms. To one who is primarily familiar with the "thing"
variation, the connection between the set-up and the idiom is simply
causal; there's no common referent (be it a thought or a thing)
between the two parts, nor does there need to be one for the
expression to make sense. The "another" contrasts with whatever
events one might have expected, not with anything in the previous
part of the sentence.
Would you say that a sentence such as, "If you think you don't need
to study for this test, you'll surely fail," is illogical, merely
because the first part refers to a thought and the second part
doesn't?
-Scott
Raymond S. Wise
You can't have it both ways. Either it is a mistake or it is an idiom. It is
not possible for an idiom to be a mistake, only for it to have been *based*
upon a mistake. For example, in the languages of the Western world,
"melancholic" is a fossilized idiom for "sad" or "depressed" which is based
on an erroneous belief concerning black bile. The word "melancholic,"
itself, however, is not a mistake: It is a usage.
> >Assuming that you are not
> >identifying "mistake" in your above message with "nonstandard usage,"
then
> >it is simply perverse to believe that the idioms of uneducated people are
> >somehow "more mistaken" than the idioms of educated people. You can't
> >protect your position by saying "Oh, it's just my opinion," because it is
a
> >matter of logic, not opinion, and your position is logically
indefensible.
> >
> It is not a non-standard usage, it's an error which has turned an old
adage
> into nonsense. It is, in my opinion, perverse to explain such things away
> by calling them idioms, a practice that is just part of the laxity that
has
> swept the world during the past few decades; laxity in speech, dress,
> behaviour, and so on. Freedom of expression does not imply letting
> standards slip.
As I said, I wasn't discussing nonstandard usage: That's another question
entirely. The problem is that you are trying to identify as a non-idiom what
is, *objectively,* an idiom, that is, even the most conservative linguist in
the world would see that "...you've got another thing coming" is an idiom,
and it would not even occur to him to see it as a non-idiom.
I misunderstood you. I thought you knew what an idiom is, but that
conclusion seems to be an error on my part.
>
> >None of this has anything to do with the question of whether "...you've
got
> >another thing coming" is a standard usage or not. That is a separate
> >question from whether it is an idiom.
--
Raymond S. Wise
"...[Y]ou've got another thing coming" is not an adage, nor, for that
matter, is "...you've got another think coming."
Aaron J. Dinkin
> Al in Dallas wrote:
>
>> I've always been mystified by this claim of a lack of meaning for
>> "another thing coming." It's always seemed obvious to me that the
>> other thing coming is something other than the outcome you
>> expect, i.e. "another thing coming" is equivalent to "something
>> else occurring." In other words, "Boy, are you in for a
>> surprise."
>
> Post-hoc rationalization, Al. I suppose it explains why people
> saying "another thing coming" don't realize how idiotic it really
> is. See my post on "eat your cake and have it." It's still far
> inferior to the ingenious "another think coming." If you're going
> to use a cliche, at least use the version with a bit of
> inventiveness and humor.
I think you're going a bit too far with "ingenious". I'm firmly on the
"think" side, to the extent that I'm on a side at all in this
disagreement, but "another think coming" is scarcely any more meaningful
or intelligible than "another thing coming". I encountered the "think"
version long before encountering the "thing" version - indeed, I'm not
convinced that I did not meet "another thing coming" first in a.u.e,
likely though it is that I didn't. But my reaction the first time or two I
encountered the "think" version - I think it was in an Uncle Scrooge comic
book - was "What? I can't parse that. That's not grammatical. Must be a
typo." "Another think coming" is far from the apex of lucidity, as far as
idioms are concerned.
-Aaron J. Dinkin
Dr. Whom
Areff
> On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 16:54:14 -0700, Skitt <ski...@comcast.net> wrote:
>> Al in Dallas wrote:
>>> I've always been mystified by this claim of a lack of meaning for
>>> "another thing coming." It's always seemed obvious to me that the
>>> other thing coming is something other than the outcome you
>>> expect, i.e. "another thing coming" is equivalent to "something
>>> else occurring." In other words, "Boy, are you in for a
>>> surprise."
>>
>> That's all well and good, but it is not the same as "another think coming",
>> which means that the original thought that produced an idea, because of that
>> idea's non-validity, will have to be rethought. There is nothing in the
>> original idiom about any things, just thoughts.
>
> So then "another thing coming" is a slightly different idiom than
> "another think coming", with a different literal meaning but
> applicable to similar situations.
Indeed, "another thing coming" is sufficiently meaningful to its users
that it has given rise to a variant, "[if you think that,]you've got
something else coming".
--
R H Draney
>
>I'd like to say a few words (an anomaly right there, no?) about the
>following: "You can't have your cake and eat it." That's how you
>hear it, almost invariably, in the US, and I'd wager it's the
>prevalent form in the UK and elsewhere by now. Fowler pointed out
>that you can both have your cake and eat it -- you just can't do so
>simultaneously. First you have it, then you eat it. What you can't
>do is both eat it and have it, because if you eat it you no longer
>have it. And if you trace it back, I believe you will find that the
>"eat - have" form was the original. (I tried it once, and that's
>the result I got.)
Let's go out and beat up on people who say "head over heels" as if that's not
the way most people spend the better part of the day....r
Tony Cooper
wrote:
>On 14 Jun 2004 15:29:14 -0700, mike_l...@yahoo.co.uk (Mike Lyle)
>wrote:
>
>>david56 <bass.c...@ntlworld.com> wrote in message news:<MPG.1b37f5709...@news.individual.net>...
>>> Ross Howard typed thus:
>>[...]
>>> > Although I probably *am* roughly the average age of AUEers, are there
>>> > actually that many of us in our mid-forties? I can only think of a
>>> > few. Most of the others seem to be ten years or more younger (e.g.
>>> > RF, Simon... [where he?]) or older (e.g. Mike Lyle, TC, Bob L....).
>>>
>>> That'll be me. Hence my nom-de-Usenet.
>>
>>I can't make any such exciting claims as Ross; I was 19 on the 1962
>>Aldermaston March, saw Neil Harvey break a bat for Aus, nothing else
>>dramatic, really.
>>
>The first datable event I can remember was the funeral of George VI,
>when I was five.
The first world event that I can remember that I can specifically put
a date to was VE Day. I was a week shy of my 7th birthday.
I remember it so clearly because people were honking, shouting out of
car windows, and hugging strangers on the street. I was walking home
from school. I was excited about it being "VE Day", but I didn't know
what it meant until I got home and my mother explained.
Ben Zimmer
Did we ever establish how long the "something else coming" version has
been around? The earliest cite I can find is from a number of UK papers
on Oct. 13, 1990 (the Times, the Guardian, the Independent) quoting
Kenneth Baker, then chairman of the Tory Party:
"It is no good some of our colleagues going on
television and putting over their views, which
consist of distancing themselves from the government.
If they think that is how they are going to win their
seats they have got something else coming to them."
So it looks like this is another variant that can't be pinned (solely)
on Leftpondians.
Michael West
I think an earlier rhetorical equivalent would have been,
"if you think x, well, think again" or "guess again." I wonder
if the "You've got another think coming" version was some
sort of play on -- what? -- a radio quiz game? a carnival game
(as in "you've got another ball/bowl/throw/shot coming")?
Was "think" substituted humorously for another word
in what was once a familiar phrase, that has since disappeared,
leaving only this humorous echo?
Anyone?
Steve Hayes
wrote:
>Regardless of their faulty research, I find it gratifying to
>read their
>
> arising from misapprehension of <to have another
> think coming>
>
>I have no doubt at all that that's a valid conclusion. I
>would find it extremely hard to imagine that "another thing
>coming" could have entered the language in any other way.
Rather like "for all intensive purposes".
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk
Steve Hayes
>On 14 Jun 2004 15:29:14 -0700, mike_l...@yahoo.co.uk (Mike Lyle)
>wrote:
>I was just the right age to he a hippie, though, and managed to wind
>up the fellows of my Cambridge college in some very satisfactory ways.
>My best discovery was that, although you had to wear a gown when
>dining in Hall, and a jacket under it, no rule specified what, if
>anything, you wore on your feet. My tutor finally put a stop to the
>barefootedness by wheeling out the ultimate weapon - "The college
>servants have complained". I'm sure it was true; they were a much more
>conservative bunch than the academic staff.
Ah, yes, and in my Durham college we had to wear gowns at lectures, and when
going to and from lectures. We wore them, but with bright orange trousers and
the like.
What wound up the college servants, however, was that a friend of mine had a
nude painting on his wall.
It was not the nude as such that worried them, however. It was that she was
his girlfriend, and they knew her, because she was always in and out of
college, including when she sat for the painting. Nudes you knew were bad
nudes.
Areff
> I think an earlier rhetorical equivalent would have been,
> "if you think x, well, think again" or "guess again." I wonder
> if the "You've got another think coming" version was some
> sort of play on -- what? -- a radio quiz game?
No -- the "think" expression is older than radio.
> a carnival game
> (as in "you've got another ball/bowl/throw/shot coming")?
>
> Was "think" substituted humorously for another word
> in what was once a familiar phrase, that has since disappeared,
> leaving only this humorous echo?
There's another version, "If you think that, you've got another guess
coming"; perhaps that's older than "think".
--
Michael West
Some sort of parlour game, perhaps, where
"You've got another guess [or waddeva] coming"
would have been a set phrase?
Peter Moylan
>More importantly, there is little, if any, difference
>between "thingcoming" and "thinkcoming" in most
>versions of spoken English. I don't hear any at all.
>Few people pronounce the space between those words.
There's certainly a difference in my speech, but it's not in the
space. In "think coming" I aspirate the "c", while it's
unaspirated in "thing coming". In fact, the second could even
sound like "thing gumming" to someone who wasn't listening carefully.
--
Peter Moylan peter at ee dot newcastle dot edu dot au
http://eepjm.newcastle.edu.au (OS/2 and eCS information and software)
Ben Zimmer
>
> Michael West wrote:
> > I think an earlier rhetorical equivalent would have been,
> > "if you think x, well, think again" or "guess again." I wonder
> > if the "You've got another think coming" version was some
> > sort of play on -- what? -- a radio quiz game?
>
> No -- the "think" expression is older than radio.
Now that the Chicago Tribune has been added to my corner of Proquest,
I've found a citation from 1898:
From the State Press.
Chicago Daily Tribune, Sep 24, 1898, p. 6
Chicago thinks it wants a new charter. Chicago has
another think coming. It doesn't need a new charter
half as much as it needs some honest officials.
-- Quincy Whig.
> > a carnival game
> > (as in "you've got another ball/bowl/throw/shot coming")?
> >
> > Was "think" substituted humorously for another word
> > in what was once a familiar phrase, that has since disappeared,
> > leaving only this humorous echo?
>
> There's another version, "If you think that, you've got another guess
> coming"; perhaps that's older than "think".
Proquest suggests they both emerged in the late 1890s. Again from the
Chicago Tribune:
May Ignore the Fight
Chicago Daily Tribune, Jun 8, 1899, p. 4
"I don't care what he says about the purse being
divided. He's got another guess coming. I know what
I am doing and he is only guessing, so there you are."
[quoting a boxer named Fitzsimmons]
Bob Cunningham
(Steve Hayes) said:
[...]
> Rather like "for all intensive purposes".
And "The readings we got yesterday and the ones from this
morning don't jive."
Richard Maurer
Ben Zimmer wrote:
Phooey... so much for relying on the editions available on Amazon.
It'sinteresting, though, that the passages by Marsh and Kesey
both had <think> in the original editions, and both were apparently
"corrected" to <thing> by later editors, perhaps in the '80s
when the <thing> variant became widely popularized. This suggests
that these editors, like many AUEers, considered <another thing coming>
to be the "standard" version of the expression.
An interesting but difficult question is when did
"have a think about it"
become unsaid in this country, other than jocularyly.
As I understand, the phrase is unremarkable in the UK.
(How about Australia?) Since that is unsayable here,
the correction to "thing" makes perfect sense,
indeed, it would be surprising if the correction were not made
(since the "that" usually references a "thing").
Or perhaps both phrases were introduced after the countries
split lingustically, and one phrase traveled and the other did not.
If "have a think about it" is old enough,
what was the first year of nonuse?
Probably too tough of a question even for the OED.
-- ---------------------------------------------
Richard Maurer To reply, remove half
Sunnyvale, California of a homonym of a synonym for also.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Barnes
>I have this vision of the past 50 or so years, during which adages that
>have been around for centuries are passed incorrectly from father to son
>unto several generations, just because someone misheard something and it
>caught on. I expect to read "A stitch in time saves mine" and "Look before
>justification (that it's idiomatic) for "I could care less" (which means
>the exact opposite of what it's supposed to mean) and other, similarly
>don't think about them, but that's the point: they *don't* think about
>them, and justification of such mistakes seems to me to be a
>descriptivistic step too far.
How do you feel about "head over heels"?
--
Mike Barnes
Cheshire, England
Mike Barnes
>Shouldn't it be "...you've got another thought coming" or maybe "...you
>should think again"? "Think" isn't a noun.
Have you never heard someone say "Have a think about it"?
Keith Edgerley
"Steve Hayes" <haye...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:40ce7924...@news.saix.net...
No doubt they were given appointments at different times, being known as,
for instance, the nine o'clock nudes and the ten o'clock nudes.
Keith Edgerley