Its thing. ‘If you think you are going to dance with my wife, you have another thing coming.’
It’s “think”. “Thing” is a mishearing and it’s a silly one because it makes no sense in context.
“You have another think coming” is a play on words. Change it to “thing” and it’s like saying “No way, Fernando” instead of “No way, José.”
You have another thing coming is a veiled threat; its not meant to be a play on words.
It makes no sense. “Another thing”? What was the first thing? And since when was a “thing” something to fear? No one would have said “you have another thing coming” unless “you have another think coming” was already an expression. It’s obviously just a mishearing of “you have another think coming.”
Absolutely wrong. The Brits say have another think but not the Americans.
The first thing, in the above example, is if you think you are going to do action A (dance with my wife) then B you have another thing coming…like a punch in the nose.
It’s a play off the original “another think”- The problem is you can’t say you have “another think coming” and sound at all menacing. But change it to “thing”, and it could be anything- maybe another “think”, or maybe a fist in your face. So it IS wordplay, and a pretty decent one -it’s changing the original lame-ass saying into something that sounds nearly the same but has an edge to it and opens up a whole new possible meaning.
You think one thing, but reality is another thing; thus, you’ve got another thing coming.
I always thought it was thing but was convinced otherwise in an earlier thread here on the dope. It may be taking longer than we thought but there has been some progress.
It may have started as think, but it’s become thing. That’s how most people say it so that’s what it is. Enough may hang on to “think” to make that remain a correct version as well, but there is nothing incorrect about the usage of “thing”
Clearly, some of us grew up hearing one variant, and some the other variant.
Both variants “work” grammatically. Even if they didn’t, or if one variant really does seem more logical, language often has quirky colloquialisms.
Is everyone just going to do their prescriptivist peeving over which variant is a priori “obviously” the better or more correct one, or are you guys actually interested in empirical data on instances of early usage of each variant, and frequency of use of each variant over time?
If you look at the Language Log links on my post #9 there’s some data, references and analysis from a linguist. The last link has some analysis of the pronunciation. My guess is that both variants have persisted because they sound almost indistinguishable, and the colloquialism is more often spoken than written.
Idioms/cliches in popular usage don’t necessarily need to be witty or profound. Seems very simple and straightforward to me-“You have assumed that one thing is going to happen, but instead another thing will instead.” To me “think” is clearly the obviously poor, ineloquent, and nay nonsensical impostor here.
Can’t believe the poll isn’t running 90-10 in favor of “thing.” Nouning weirds language just as much as verbing does.
Northern Virginia, 1960s and 1970s. Another think coming.
Never heard that anyone used ‘thing’ until people discussed it on this board.
And while it’s true that idioms don’t have to make sense, it’s still the default.
“He thinks that, does he? Well, he’s got another think coming” is the sort of usage I’d always heard it, and it makes sense: my think is gonna trump his think. Can’t think of a reason other than sloppy speech why it would be ‘thing.’
I was raised in the northeast US in the 80s and 90s, and I only ever heard “think,” not encountering “thing” until adulthood, I believe in a previous discussion on this very message board.
This is not a British-American issue. I’m an American. There’s no question in my mind that “thing” is a mishearing of “think.” Whether one is more common than another now is a matter for statistical study.
It does seem to me that they are almost indistinguishable aurally. Rather than there being any kind of regional pattern, perhaps both variants exist everywhere? If you first think you hear one variant in childhood, perhaps you fix on that and always hear it that way, even if people are speaking both variants. It simply may not occur to the majority of people that the other variant exists unless they see it in writing, or the existence of both variants is raised explicitly. Even if the other variant is seen in writing, it might easily be dismissed as a typo.
I was completely certain that my dad used to say “you have another think coming” (he used the expression frequently to rebuke me). But in retrospect, am I really sure which variant he was using? I actually don’t know, they sound barely distinguishable in my dialect. I certainly never asked him to explain the logic of the phrase, since as a child it never occurred to me that the other word was a valid possibility.
So Cal late 1950s kid here. It’s “thing.” The only place I’ve ever heard or read “think” is on the 'Dope. And the justifications I read here for the “think” interpretation are strained to the breaking point. Conversely “thing” is both obvious and eloquent.
And yes, we’ve done this before. The list below is all I could find quickly, but I recall there are more.
Here’s a thread on point from 2012 with 180 posts: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=15696858
It’s brought up at post 154 *et seq *in this thread from 2006: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=7265690
Here’s a thread on point from 2004 with 95 posts: another THINK coming - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board
And another from 2000 which refs an even older thread: "You've got another think/thing coming.. - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board
Turning to the wider world …
An unqualified Bing search for “another think coming” has 51,500 hits. An unqualified Bing search for “another thing coming” has 329,000 hits, roughly 6x more.
An unqualified Google search for “another think coming” has 82,600 hits. An unqualified Google search for “another thing coming” has 366,000 hits, roughly 4.5x more.
My bottom line: Both variants are found in the wild. But clearly “thing” has the weight of numbers behind it.
That works for me. A great thing about English, as opposed to Spanish, is that there is no Authority handing down an official version of the language. It is awesomely malleable.
As I said, the current statistics on usage are a different issue, but this is clearly wrong. “Think” is clearly the original and “thing” is an originally mistaken variation.
I think I’d better bow out of this thread before I go insane.
Why is it that people find it so hard to treat language empirically, and to realize how arbitrary, contingent and variable most usage is?
People have no problem grasping that some people in the world grow up using “pense” instead of “think”, and that neither variant is a priori “obviously the correct version”.
So why is that when there are dialects and variants within English, people cannot grasp that a variant that is natural, proper and instinctive to them, because that’s the dialect they grew up with, may differ from the usage that is equally natural, proper and instinctive to somebody else?
It’s astonishing how dogmatically people are willing to assert the obvious and incontrovertible logic of one variant or the other, and asbolutely reject the other variant as an obvious corruption of the One True Way to speak English!
Ok, I’ll go and make some decaf.
Grew up in L.A. in 70s and 80s. “Think”