Another Think Coming vs. Another Thing Coming

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who’s this?

Hi, this is Sam Ford from Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Hey, Sam.

What’s up? How can we help?

I am very interested in a question that has been plaguing me for years in conversations with people, and it all revolves around the phrase, if that’s what you think, comma, you have another blank coming.

-huh, another blank coming.

And what would you put in that blank?

I would put the word think, P-H-I-N-K. I found that there’s two types of people in this debate. There are the people who dislike grammatical errors, for which T-H-I-N-G, think, seems to be the preference.

And then there are people who are focused on logical wordplay, for which the grammatical inconsistency is part of the fun of the phrase, in which case, T-H-I-N-K-E-T-H-E-N-K seems to be the better choice.

But I’ve found no real consistency in conversations over the years. Half the people I know seem to use one and half the other.

So, Sam, your argument is that it should be parallel.

If you think this, if you think verb, then you have another think that is a noun coming.

Right?

Exactly.

That you need to rethink your thought.

Yeah.

That is a paradigm shift.

You need a paradigm shift in your mind.

Yeah, the wordplay of if you think X, then you’ve got another think coming.

Yeah.

But now people drop off that first part before the comma and they only do, well, you’ve got another thing coming and they don’t really get the joke anymore.

You don’t get the wordplay.

Right.

Well, that makes sense.

I do wonder, because we don’t use think as a noun, if part of the dropping off of the first half of the phrase came from the fact, because that’s what I’ve heard people express, is you’ve got another think coming is not a, you would say, thought.

Right?

Right.

I’ve heard, but of course, that wouldn’t be a very fun wordplay.

No.

In the original phrase.

Right.

But another think coming is grammatical, but it’s nonsensical in my mind.

It doesn’t make any sense.

What thing?

I mean, that’s so vague and irrelevant.

It makes no sense.

I’m thinking of like a comic book character, the thing. That’s all I think of.

I think we’re overthinking it.

Well, you know, it is true. We almost always have another thing coming in general.

Yeah, one after the other, right? Until the last days.

Yeah, that’s what I always pictured was another thing kind of coming around the corner. You’re thinking this way, but there’s another issue that you have to deal with that’s just around the corner.

But I think Grant has keyed in on something, which is that sometimes that first part of it falls away, and people just say, well, you have another thing coming.

I hadn’t thought about that, but it makes sense. Do you all have any idea? How old is this?

It’s pretty old. What, at least 100?

At least 100 years. Yeah.

We can find both another thing coming and another think coming from the early 1900s.

Now, we find another think company from far earlier because it was the original form, but they are both so common now that they continue to battle it out for supremacy, and neither is really coming to the fore.

Brian Garner, who is a linguistically conservative language expert, and I mean linguistic and not politically conservative, he actually ranks this as a four out of five on his language change scale, and that means that he thinks the change is almost completely done.

Where there are a few quibblers who dislike another thing coming, but they might as well just give it up because it’s going to be permanent before too long.

I refuse to. I’ve got to hold on to this phrase. The wordplay is too rich to let go of think.

Well, and the nice thing is if they don’t get it, the wordplay feels all the sweeter, doesn’t it?

Exactly. It gives you even more pleasure.

Well, if people think this phrase is going away, they have another think coming.

We’ll do it right there. That’s a perfect close, Sam. Thank you so much.

All right, Sam. Thank you. Thank you all. Take care.

Okay. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

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