When Racism Slips Into Everyday Speech

[tblue37]

62. Not really, because the line "You've got another think coming"

is just the latter half of a comment like, "If that's what you think, then you've got another think coming"--meaning think again, because you are wrong.

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But say it or swallow it, "another think coming" is the original version. It's a general-purpose warning, more than a century old, that means "think again," or, more directly, "you're wrong" <emphasis added>."

Google Books turns up several early examples: In the 1914 novel "Boltwood of Yale," for instance, one man says "I think we'll wait"; the other replies, "Then you've got another think coming to you." H.L. Mencken, in the 1921 edition of "The American Language," cites it as an example of how words shift parts of speech: "The verb to think, in 'he had another think coming,' becomes a noun."

And by 1932, "another think" was widespread enough to earn a reproach in "Words Confused and Misused," by M.H. Weseen: "This misuse of think as a noun is creeping into the speech of many who seem unaware that it is ungrammatical."

But Weseen didn't mean you should use thing instead. That alternative version had already appeared in print - the Oxford English Dictionary finds "another thing coming" as early as 1919 - but it arose, the OED warns, "from misapprehension of to have another think coming <emphasis added>."

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http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/05/04/the_think_thing/?page=full