Pedants unite! Please come & vote for “another think coming”!

[GiantKitten]

Dominic Grieve is reported to have said “another thing”!
In the Commons

mobile.twitter.com/Natt/status/1169200952949321728

Seriously, if he has ANOTHER thing coming, WTAF was the first thing? "Another thing" only makes sense if it was preceded by an initial thing. But it wasn't! It was preceded by a "think". Gosh, the phrase would make SO MUCH SENSE if the first "think" was succeeded by "another think". Oh, wait a minute - IT IS!

How is this so hard for people to get?!?

Think.

I remember a huuuuuge MN thread about this in about 2010 or something (I’m sure there have been many threads over the years). I got quite worked up about it. I no longer have the energy for that, but it’s still clearly THINK.

1000 times THINK

Anyway, "thing coming" is documented by the OED back to 1919, so it's a century old. Apparently, the earliest documented "think coming" is 18 years AFTER that!

Nope, "think" predates "thing", I'm afraid. Mid-nineteenth century, here

Yes, only 'think' makes sense. But plenty of saying have morphed over time into nonsensical versions of themselves.

The superiority of a few of the 'think' brigade leaves a bad taste though, like the pp who'd presume anyone who said "another thing" to be a bit stupid - why so snooty?!

Think.

Definitely.

If you think it’s thing you’ve got another think coming 😆

The only other thing that is coming is another think.

It is think. It has always been think. It always will be think. Anything else would be unthinkable.

It’s think.

See www.lexico.com/en/definition/have_(got)_another_think_coming

If you THINK that, you have another THINK coming - I.e. you will think again.

Sleep - I agree with you. For most of my life, I thought it was "thing coming" - it made sense to me (I don't know if I ever thought about it that hard, but there are plenty of idioms we use where the literal sense is a bit obscure). Now I know it's "think".

No drama, no need to abuse perfectly intelligent people who have picked up the wrong version. We can learn, and happily move on.

And check out Google Ngrams on the most cmonnon usage: 'think' wins by a long way:

books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=another+thing+coming%2C+another+think+coming&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Canother%20thing%20coming%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Canother%20think%20coming%3B%2Cc0

No drama, no need to abuse perfectly intelligent people who have picked up the wrong version.

So what is Pedants' Corner for then?

It's think, the amount of times I've been the one having another think, when I was a child

Of course it's think.

What exactly do people saying it's 'thing' think this unnamed 'thing' is that's coming in place of the original thought.

@campion, or other thinks?

Think

In answer to what the 'thing' is, the think is followed by a thing (if you think you're going to go to that party, eg. Going to the party is the 'thing'). That 'thing' is not going to happen, another 'thing' is. It's not the thought, but the action that is being questioned.
BOTH think and thing make an equal amount of (non)sense to me...I think

Now I've written the word 'thing' so much it doesn't look like a real word anymore!

Of course it’s ‘think’. Labouring under the delusion it’s ‘thing’ is, while not quite ‘chester draws’ territory, certainly about as literate as people who pipe up ‘The proof is in the pudding!’

It’s think! Voting buttons need to be added to this thread!

Think.

And I heard him say thing and thought aaargh

My family are thingers and so I was brought up a thingers. Over the years, MN has changed my mind and I now acknowledge it should be 'think' but I do sometimes let a thing slip in as it's hard to undo all the years of thinging.
And if I got that out without autocorrect making a mess of it, I will be amazed.

@Alun, cast off your upbringing and reject your family’s Wrongful Ways!!

Next thing we will be hearing about radicalisation camps where teenagers are trained in ‘defiantly’, ‘would of’ and ‘chester draws’.

It's think. As in, think again.

I never ever use this phrase because it makes no sense when 'think' is used.

Think is a verb. You cannot have a 'think' coming to/for/at you. You can have a thought coming, but not a think. 'If you think that, you've got another thought coming' would make sense and be grammatically sound.

You can however, have a thing coming to/for/at you, because 'thing' is a noun.