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Issue 24
July 2009
A Whole Nother Nother
"It's a whole nother thing." The sentence rolls off the tongue easily, and it's commonly heard in English along with variants such as "a whole nother level" or "a whole nother ball of wax."
Despite the ubiquity of these expressions, "nother" isn't really a word. The speaker is splitting up "another" by dropping "whole" in the middle of it.
What would be more correct? Standard English offers some alternatives to "a whole nother thing"—"a whole other thing" or perhaps "an entirely different thing"—but these don't really cut it. The first comes off as stiff and awkward, and the second is, well, an entirely different thing. So although "nother" may not be suitable for business or academia, English speakers' natural feel for their language's texture gives "a whole nother thing" a certain degree of legitimacy.
"Nother" has even made it into dictionaries as a misdivision of "another," and the expression has been around at least since the country's bell-bottomed days. It appears on 1970s funk albums. When young Luke Skywalker was stuck on a remote, desert farm in Star Wars and his uncle delayed his plans, he complained, "But that's a whole nother year!"
About this E-mail
The Awkward Adverb, an e-mail newsletter sent out once a month, highlights English-language flaws that have appeared on a sign, in print, on the Web, or anywhere in the public sphere. It may address grammatical errors, careless usage, bothersome buzzwords, punctuation problems, misspellings, or confusing writing in general.
Subscribers are encouraged to submit their findings for future editions of The Awkward Adverb by responding to this e-mail. Archived past issues of the newsletter are located here.
Action Copy, the publisher of The Awkward Adverb, is the business name for New Orleans-based freelance writer Henry Alpert, who works with businesses, ad agencies, and graphic design firms on a wide array of writing projects. For more information about Action Copy's services, visit action-copy.com.
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