I had reached page 17 of Mockingbird, A Portrait of Harper Lee by Charles J. Shields, when I noticed something I immediately identified as a typo. It came at the end of this sentence: “If Nelle thought she could get a book written, accepted and published in a finger snap – well, she had another thing coming.”
Another thing? Are you kidding me? As it turned out, the person in the next room was a tutor, so I showed the sentence to her, and waited for a reaction. She shrugged. I gestured and pointed vigorously at the book.
“Another thing coming?”
No reaction.
“It should be another think coming.”
She seemed to doubt this. I continued. “Thing is too generic. If we reject “another think coming” because it might be clumsy or grammatically incorrect, then the expression would be "another thought coming"… but not thing. Not another thing. Thing? Really?”
This discussion continued for a few minutes without resolution (which would come eventually, thanks to Google).
Hours later I was having another discussion with another friend at another location (this one had beer) and I suddenly remembered the typo. I insinuated my earlier incredulity into our conversation and received the same blank look.
“They sound alike,” I said. “Another think coming. Another thing coming. That’s the problem.”
“Yes,” my friend said impassively, “But it’s “another thing.”
I screamed inside, but said, “No. It can’t be. I won’t have it. I will not have it.” (Did I mention the beer?)
Did you ever hear the wrong lyrics? The girl with colitis goes by? ‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy? Charlene don’t like it, rock the cash bar? It happens. I recently discovered a line from You Never Give Me Your Money I misheard for forty years.
But, my whole life, it has always been another think coming. It’s only logical. The word in question always follows the word think or the word thought. So, according to the tenor of this particular sentiment, there would be another one coming.
My tutor friend has mentioned that people don’t generally use think as a noun, and she's correct. But doing so in this context is logical -- and there is clarity in this version that bypasses the other.
Another thing deflates the meaning. It makes the expression hopelessly flaccid. In this context, thing might as well be dohickey… or doodad.
And, I will not have it.
I Googled around and found a source that (while not definitive) validates my position, and is good enough for me. What continues to boggle my mind is the popularity of another thing coming – and the fact that I had never encountered this interpretation until yesterday.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/another-think-coming.html
According to this link (which has convinced at least one of the aforementioned friends) most people simply say the wrong thing.
I think.
