Sorry, I didn’t give enough context. Clothing is “three-piece suit”. The term I was referring to was “three-piece suite” (pron. “sweet”). This refers to a sofa and two armchairs (though could be a chair, a ‘love seat’ and a sofa). I’ve heard it said like the clothing phrase.
I always hear furniture referred to as an X piece set. I can understand suite, but I’ve not heard it in use in that way before.
I saw a menu which listed an item as served “with au jus sauce”. My head about exploded.
Shortly after I moved from Ohio to Indiana, I saw a furniture store commercial in which the announcer (supposedly the store owner) mentioned “bedroom suites”, but pronounced the second word like “suits”. I figured the guy was just misinformed, and that nobody involved in the production of the ad had bothered to correct him.
Then I went to an auction and heard the auctioneer describe a “nice bedroom suit” that was now up for bids. I’ve since heard the pronunciation enough to conclude that it’s part of the Hoosier dialect, although I’ll continue to say “sweet” on the rare occasion when the need may arise.
Precisely why I brought it up in this thread: “another thing coming” seems to be displacing the original “another think coming” in the collective consciousness.
In much the same way, the original “for pity’s sake” has become “for Pete’s sake.”
Mis-hearing becomes misspelling.
Have you ever read To Kill a Mockingbird? You will find the original “another think coming” used there.
I can’t speak for where you are, but it’s frequently heard as a noun in these parts. I’ll often sit and have a think, and if things don’t turn out as I expect, I may have a re-think. It can’t be a very uncommon usage either; my pocket-sized Oxford Popular Dictionary may mark it (colloq.), but it does actually include it, where many other words are omitted.
Forgetting the transatlantic thing, I wonder if it’s a north/south England divide? I genuinely have never encountered it, and - somewhat more tenuously - many people in the north of England have a rebounging G on “ng” sounds, which might make me think they were saying “thing” rather than “think”.
Really? Etymonline has the original being ‘for God’s sake’, and dates the construction to around 1300, which is getting towards the earliest date for ‘pity’ at all (meaning ‘piety’). And I was always under the impression the ‘Pete’ in that version was St Peter, which would follow more logically from the original version.
Well, they’re in good company. I had to look up that one. Webster’s Ninth Collegiate* gives “chaise lounge” as a seperate entry (referencing “chaise longue”), and says the variant has been around at least since 1921. The two are pronounced differently.
jjimm: I recall from my very brief career as a warehouseman at a furniture store in 1973 that one of the salesmen pronounced suite as suit. Interestingly, Webster’s gives that as an alternative pronounciation for the “bunch of things” definition. Probably explains the misspelling.
Anyone else in this thread paranoid about committing a typo??
- Yeah, I’m two editions behind. I haven’t yet worn out the one I have. Deal with it.
Predominately. Ugh.
If a thing predominates, or is predominant, the word is 'predominantly."
I remember words for these threads long after they’ve died, and I know there are some that aren’t coming to mind right now, that haven’t been mentioned.
Well, there’s ‘vaccum’ in the title of a GQ thread today. And shoes have ‘souls’ and ‘heals.’
Here you go. According to Michael Quinion, “for Pete’s sake” doesn’t arrive on the scene until the 1920’s.
But that’s the point I’m making by bringing it up in this thread. A lot of people do say “You’ve got another thing coming.” That version is well on its way to supplanting the original.
My larger point in bringing up both “You’ve got another think coming” and “for pity’s” sake is that misheard and misspelled words supplanting originals is not a new phenomenon, and none of us is immune. (Lest we become arrogant about the misspellings we encounter on a message board.)
The way people use “everyday” as something other than an adjective drives me insane, as in: “I use that road everyday to get to work.”
Grrr.
Similarly, I once saw “everytime” used in ad copy. (It was a Colt 45 Malt Liquor billboard featuring Billy Dee Williams, with the tagline “Works everytime.”)
Gah.
The past tense of the verb “to lead” is spelled led. But even on this board, and certainly elsewhere on the Internets (which are analogous to a series of tubes), I see it spelled like its homonym, the metallic element: “lead”.
I have never before in my entire life heard or read your “correct” phrase used anywhere.
A Googlefight search on the two phrases reveals 140,000 results for “thing” and 48,600 for “think”, with the vast majority of the first five pages of Google results on the phrase “another think coming” being grammar police pages from within the past year or so trying desperately to convince people that “another think coming” is the correct turn of phrase.
I call bullshit.
“If you think X, you’ve got another think coming.”
A number of pages claim this phrase is a deliberately ungrammatical joke, and because half-hearted and half-assed searches have failed to reveal older written references to “another thing coming”, it is deemed the winner.
Here is where pedantry must give way to logic. “Another think coming” is patently nonsensical. The only way for it to register as humor rather than stupidity is if “another thing coming” already has currency as a familiar phrase.
While this demonstrates that “for Pete’s sake” is a latecomer to the category of epithets of exasperation, Mike is just throwing out odd possible connections without actually demonstrating origin.
I see no reason to believe that Pete came from pity, as opposed to being simply a filler that someone grabbed. “For <~> sake” has included heaven’s, God’s, Sweet Jesus’s, pity, gosh, and probably a few more over the years.
A clear indication that “for pity’s sake” was the most prevalent exclamation in 1917 and that it had been thoroughly replaced by “for Pete’s sake” by 1925 might make a stronger claim, but I don’t see that the pity==>Pete claim has much to support it (especially in light of Quinlon’'s own observations about “for the love of Mike/Pete.”
I love a good word war.
I gave you a cite for use of “another think coming” from 1960 (To Kill a Mockingbird). The OED apparently has an earlier example, from 1937. Do you have any evidence of an earlier usage for “another thing coming”?
The fact that “thing” has a greater volume of usage currently only proves my point: that “another thing coming” is supplanting the original phrase.
I’m afraid my copy is in a box awaiting completion of renovations on my home office. Could you give the paragraph in which it’s used?
Your cite is second-hand, and does not give the actual OED source. It also suggests that the OED does not address the phrase, “another thing coming” at all, rather than having evidence of “think”'s priority. Your source also rationalizes that because an earlier phrase, “you have another guess coming”, existed, and “think” is similar to “guess”, then “think” must be correct. It also states that a majority of editors at Merriam-Webster are of the opinion that “thing” is correct.
I’d find a better source if I were you.
Supplanting, nothing. SupplanTED, and long ago, if indeed it did. I’ve already provided a repeatable experiment whereby you can demonstrate for yourself that no one seems to be making use of “think” other than your fellow travellers, trying to Orwell the rest of us into thinking that we’ve heard something else all these years.
tomndebb, Quinion followed up on his column here:
I agree with him that the derivation from “for pity’s sake” makes logical sense. Easy to see how someone could mis-hear “pity’s sake” as “Pete’s sake.” Quinion is a consultant for the OED, so I take his opinion on the subject seriously. And apparently (though Quinion is not clear on this point in the column) “for pity’s sake” was in use earlier.