I often hear the expression “You’ve got another thing coming.” However, I’m fairly convinced that the correct expression is “You’ve got another THINK coming.” The expression is a deliberately ungrammatical way of saying “think again.” Using the word “thing” makes no sense at all.
However, if I’m right, it means that the majority (of websites, anyway) are wrong. Google turns up 789 hits for “You’ve got another think coming,” and 2630 for “You’ve got another thing coming.”
So my question for you Dopers is two-fold:
(1) Am I correct that it should be “think” and not “thing”?
(2) Are there any other cases you can find where the incorrect expression gets more hits than the correct one?
(If the answer to #1 is “No” then remove the word other from #2.)
So what’s the first “thing”? If there’s “another thing coming” there has to be a first thing, right? Is it the set of everything that I have anticipated?
I’ve also heard “I’ve that’s what you think, you’ve got another thing/think coming” which seems to suggest “think” even more.
Well, does everyone else think I’m wrong as well? (For the record, I did see at least some websites that say “thing” is an error and “think” is correct, which at least proves I’m not alone in this delusion if that’s what it is.)
Any answers to my second question? (expressions you know are wrong but are more common than the correct version) You can still answer that even if you think the one I gave doesn’t qualify.
One that doesn’t quite work for my google test, but that I think is true has to do with peruse: It means “to read with great care” but is more often (I think) used to mean almost the opposite, “to read in a cursory manner.”
Then again, perhaps the second usage (definitely not the original meaning) is now an accepted alternate definition. It’s in www.m-w.com, for instance.
I’ve lived in British Columbia/Oregon all my life, and I’ve never heard the “think” version before today.
I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned Judas Priest yet. I’m most familiar with the expression from the song lyrics I’ve heard overplayed a thousand times on the buttrock station:
“Out there is a fortune waiting to be had
If you think I’ll let it go, you’re mad
You’ve got another thing coming”
Then again, neither phrase is exactly common these days.
Call me unadventurous, but I’ll take authoritative cites and common sense over a heavy metal record sleeve any day. Plus my mum always said “You’ve got another think coming”, and, of course, she’s always right.
Oh, and, from Collins English Dictionary, 6th edtion (2003), the following appears under the root word think:
I think that closes the matter, Judas Priest notwithstanding…
‘If you think we’re still going to the zoo after what you just did to your sister, you’ve got another think coming.’ (or many, many variations thereof).
I’d never heard of “you’ve got another think coming” before I’d read this. I always use “thing”, as does everyone else I’ve ever heard use the expression.
I’ve heard both, but as “another think coming” sounds grammatically atrocious (it should be “another thought coming” surely?) I have always assumed the correct phrase was “another thing coming”. Using the rationale that Lamar Mundane suggested.
Ditto. in fact, I’ll go so far as to say that all the cites for “think”, though authoritative, are outdated and incomplete. Whatever the expression may have originally been, it is now in fact “another thing coming” for the vast majority of English speakers.
Cites are nice, but there are cases when they are significantly behind the curve. In matters linguistic, what is actually being said by the hoi polloi trumps what authorities think ought to be being said.
I’ve gotta say, regardless of the original phrase or meaning, to say the other is incorrect seems quite pointless, be it “think” or “decimate”. The words/phrases are used to communicate an idea. They do that very well.
