Validity of “Nother”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Dave from Chicago.

Hello, Dave. Welcome.

Hi, Dave. How are you doing?

I’m doing great. How are you guys doing?

All right.

Doing great. What would you like to talk about?

Well, there’s a phrase that I have used just about all my life, and I didn’t notice until I was maybe 40 years old that it actually wasn’t using English words. The phrase is a whole nother, as in, that’s a whole nother thing. And, you know, for 40-some-odd years, I said this, and one day I went to write it down, and, like, my pencil stopped in my hand. I’m trying to figure out how to spell this, and I’m like, wait a minute, that’s not a word. How is it possible I’ve used this all my life and never realized this before? So that kind of confounded me a little bit. And since then, every time I go to say the word, you know, the words kind of get stuck in my mouth, and I say, now what do I do, right? Because I know it’s not really right, but it’s something I use, and I don’t know what I mean. So I just wanted to know if you guys had encountered this before and what you thought about it and if there was any real background behind this or just a shortcut that everybody uses.

So you’ve been using nether as a whole other word. Or a whole nother word. Or a whole nother word. N-O-T-H-E-R.

Right.

Well, I think we can offer some comfort there, Grant. Yeah. First of all, congratulations on noticing it, I guess I should say. But on the other hand, this is not really that egregious of an error. It’s so incredibly common that virtually every style guide that you could check has a note about this. And what you might be relieved to find is almost all of them say, it’s not really that big a deal. And the reason it’s not that big a deal is that nother actually used to be a word. And what might be happening here is some lingering, in the exact phrase, a whole nother, some lingering remnant of nother kind of showing its head. It’s not necessarily what they call a misdivision of another, where you are mistakenly thinking that another is a phrase rather than a single word, and then allowing you to insert an adverb or an adjective in between.

Well, and I’m looking at the American Heritage Dictionary, and it’s in that dictionary. It’s listed as informal, but it’s in that dictionary, and it’s also in Merriam-Webster.

No kidding.

So it’s not as if it’s not a real word, but it’s regarded as informal. And it’s easy to say, right?

Oh, yeah.

It just rolls off the tongue.

Right.

Exactly. I’ve never seen it in print, though, which is, you know, why when I started to write it, it looked so strange to me.

Yeah.

Yeah. A whole other is probably ideal, especially in anything that’s even remotely formal. But a whole nother is so widespread and so common. And actually, it’s funny. It’s one of those things that I find to be charming. I like what it says about the way that we work with language. And we pretend that there are these rules that are absolutes in English, but really all of the rules that we think we have are only divined and discovered after the fact. The English is a tangled, tangled mess. And there’s some interesting things like this that we can do, where you can make something that’s perfectly comprehensible, but perhaps not completely logical.

So what I’m hearing is I can just relax and continue to say it.

That’s what we always say to people.

I don’t want to come out and not have to worry about it anymore.

Yeah, we always say that when people are worried about something in their own speech, just relax. For example, here’s a book by Bill Brohow. I think that’s how you say his name. B-R-O-H-A-U-G-H. It’s called Everything You Know About English Is Wrong. And he says the choice between an, other, and a, another. He says which is correct? Another. Another is a whole other word. Literally and figuratively, an obsolete Old English word meaning neither or neither. So yeah, you’re cool. You’re good. Maybe use a whole other when you’re writing business documents or writing something to the president or the pope or the queen, but other than that, you’re good to go. Yeah, when you’re texting us, just another. But cool, Dave.

Well, thank you very much. Glad to help.

That’s really informative and useful.

Yeah, I hope you feel better.

Oh, I feel great. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. All right, take care.

Bill Brohau’s book, Everything You Know About English is Wrong, is actually a really nice read.

Is it? Is it fun?

Yeah, yeah.

And the cool thing is I think when it comes to these kind of books, and you and I both have tons of these sorts of books on our shelves, when they don’t preach, they’re far more enjoyable, and I think I learn more from them than when they do preach. If somebody’s not trying to hammer me upside the head, then it’s easier to learn. If you’ve got a question about something you noticed in your own speech, have you been doing it wrong for 40 years? Send us an email, words@waywordradio.org, or give us a telephone call, 1-877-929-9673. And you can actually try us on Twitter at twitter.com slash Wayword.