Conversational Theology

Among the many things that frequently cause me anything from minor irritation to outright fury on the internet is the misuse of the expression ‘If you think that, you’ve got another think coming’ replacing the second ‘think’ with the meaningless ‘thing.’ What other thing is coming?

Language Log quotes from the OED to determine the original expression:

…the OED explicitly agrees about the direction of development

to have another thing coming [arising from misapprehension of to have another think coming ...]

Sadly, it also gives the statistics of internet usage:

Google has 146,000 hits for “another thing coming”, most of which are not the Judas Priest song, vs. 49,300 for “another think coming”, which I’m pretty sure is the original expression. (Arnold Zwicky observed thing’s internet victory back in June of 2004 — though the totals were much smaller then, 21,400 to 5,830.)

But, with your help, we needn’t let the internet keep winning! Turn the tide! I dare you. If we all make sure we use the correct expression, ‘another think coming’, in a blog post sometime in the next couple of days, and pass this on to your friends, then I bet we can reverse the Google hits in no time at all.