Has DH got another think coming or have I got another thing coming???

[NotMyRealName2015]

I’ll clarify

DH and I were having a light hearted debate about who was going to sort the garden out this afternoon (there are weeds growing out of weeds, and we have guests coming this week)
DH said that if I thought he was doing it today ‘I had another thing coming’.

I pointed out the phrase was ‘another think coming’ and that he should now go and do the garden as punishment for his failure.
However, he is insisting I am wrong and that ‘thing’ is the right word. I say that doesn’t even make sense! What ‘thing’ is coming?? He just says ‘English doesn’t always make sense.’ (Not technically his first language but he has a British parent so has always been bilingual and is completely fluent)

MN jury needed. Who is correct??
Loser will obviously be doing the garden. Winner will sit down with coffee and biscuits, looking smug and saying 'you've missed a bit.'

Classics? Really

Definitely not what I'm looking for when I pop into classics for a read

Classics aren't all about the lolz though are they? Some of them are informative and educational.

But maybe Pedants' Corner is a more fitting home.

Blimey! Classics?

Snort @ clam.

That's what I thought.

It's worth reading the entire thread just for clams last post

It'd a thing. Not a think

Nope it's definitely a think

The word into question is most definitely and indisputably THINK!

The End.

Well, think may be right but I don't think you can claim "indisputably" as this thread has demonstrated (along with the links posted here showing that educated people use thing, unaware that it's an error).

POORLY educated people.

That seems unlikely given it is a widespread misapprehension. Is it just your prejudice or do you have evidence that think and thing are correlated with superior and inferior education?

Honestly, I'd rather be "poorly educated" with manners than rude purpleponcho

I don't see illiteracy as anything to be proud of, either, Starky.

It depends on what you define "educatedness" as -- merely drifting through "that box-ticking facade you call any education system" or being genuinely well-read, knowledgeable and so on.

Errors such as "for all intensive purposes" and mixing up "their/they're/there" don't tend to made by people who read lots of books and see the words used in their proper contexts (assuming that the reader has no special needs).

In my view, saying "another thing coming" is more egregious than most errors because you should be able to work out the correct version by using your noggin. It's also a lovely, jocular old phrase, and it seems like a failure both of wits and of humour to get it wrong.

Forgive the inevitable typos, please.

It does annoy me to see errors dismissed as unimportant just because allegedly educated people made them. It really doesn't do anything but call into question the quality of their education.

FWIW, MrsdeVere, "You've got another think coming" is EXACTLY the sort of thing that my Latin teacher, who had been at Oxford, loved to come out with. Also "close, but no cigar" and "Aha, a trap for young players!" - before giving me a detention for scanning Virgil incorrectly. (Argh, flashbacks!) His speech was rather richer in idioms and oddities than that of most people.

Who's illiterate? Jeez, well clearly both my wits and my humour have failed me. I'll cope.

You are clearly taking my remarks more personally than intended.

Retreating from this thread... because it's not a Classic, damn it.

No, honestly, I'm not purple I just think it's rude to assume someone is poorly educated because of a misheard idiom. It's common place, as proved by this thread.

You just can't extrapolate the quality of someone's education from one error. And this error is unimportant, because it's a fairly uncommon phrase in written English, that hardly shows an ignorance of some fundamental element of grammar.

It's easy to say from a position of knowledge that any educated person would see the illogicality of "thing", but so many idioms are obscure when you analyse them, that it is just an unrealistic of how we use language to think they would spontaneously realise an error.

That was a really to purple at 17:06

I don't think it's commonplace at all, This is honestly the stupidest thread on Mumsnet. We are losing braincells by being here.

walks off muttering, "Classics, indeed..."

*reply
(showing my poor education )

Actually, purple, amid the barracking and stubborn ignorance, I've found this one of the more intelligent and enlightening threads. About a hundred posts back I dug out links to a national newspaper where both think and thing were used, including separate transcriptions of the same speech that chose differently. I find that fascinating not some tedious sign that civilisation is unravelling!