word choice - What is the origin of the phrase "you've got another thing/think coming"?


What is the origin of the phrase "you've got another thing coming"? And — perhaps more importantly — is it more correct than the alternative "you've got another think coming"?



Answer



Well, the phrase was older than I expected. NGrams reports the following matches for the phrases "got another thing coming" and "have another thing coming":


NGram image http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=got%20another%20thing%20coming%2Chave%20another%20thing%20coming&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1880&year_end=2000


Here is quote from 1906 (I think. I am still learning how Google Books works.):



But if we did, then we have another thing coming, for this is the cry-baby talk I find in this morning's (Dec. 16) editorial



As for your other question, "you've got another think coming" wasn't an established idiom as far as I was aware, but the NGrams results shocked me:


NGrams results


The usage and meaning seem identical to "thing" but I find it odd that I don't recall ever seeing it in print. Looking to phrases.org.uk:



'Another thing coming' is just a mispronunciation of the original phrase. The source of this mistake is probably the duplicated 'k' sounds of 'think' and 'coming'.



Most of the other sites I checked said similar things. Namely, "think" is the correct version and "thing" is the malformation. The origin appears to revolve around someone thinking one thing but an apparent correct will be coming shortly: They will need to rethink their previous thought (and ideally arrive at the correct position this time.)


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