slang - "A whole nother" way of looking at things


People say this so much (instead of "another whole" way, etc.) that I wonder how it got started. How did "another whole..." get changed to "a whole nother..."?



Answer



This is an example of metanalysis: taking two words that occur in close proximity, and re-analyzing them so that the word boundary changes position. In this case, the common phrase an other is reanalyzed as a nother, which then allows the insertion of the word whole to give a whole nother.


Metanalysis has happened several times in English, the most common being the word apron, which was originally napron, but suffered metanalysis from a napron into an apron. For this reason, I doubt that the creation of this phrase was an example of deliberate play on words. Rather, it's an example of a process of word-formation which operates sporadically in English, and has for a long time.


This metanalysis isn't complete, as most speakers, including myself, don't really use the word nother except in this phrase. I would never say the nother thing, for example.


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