Words

And another think

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An article from the New Statesman today included the passage:

If Rachel Reeves imagined her repeated insistence that Labour's "iron-clad" commitment to sound public finances would spare her the fate of Stafford Cripps, Jim Callaghan and Denis Healey, she had another thing coming.

I stopped reading after “she had another thing coming”. What was coming? A promotion? A cup of coffee? Surely what was meant was that her rumination would require further thought – she had another think coming. The Ngram view (for what that is worth) shows the ‘coming’ form taking off from around 2000 and becoming the more usual form today.

A chart showing the increase in usage of thing over think

It is a curious phrasing. The folksy etymology often attributed to American usage but one suspects that anyone who thinks that has another think coming.

Doing the Spotty Dog

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Watching the David Byrne dance routine in today’s Open Culture post reminded me that what he describes as Puppet Leg, where an imagined puppet string is pulled to raise the leg,

was part of a ‘dance‘ (I use the word in its loosest interpretation) routine known as the Spotty Dog that we did in the 1960s resulting in much merriment.

Upon a search for a Spotty Dog clip I discovered that it is, bizarrely, an actual exercise these days. But as Miss Cox confesses she, and I suspect many others, has no idea why it is called the Spotty Dog.

Well let me enlighten you.

From Towrags to sideburns

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After the towrag nonsense, in a piece about the Jacobite uprising of 1745, the BBC spews forth this:

We can give you Flash in the pan and Half cocked but Sideburns did not appear until almost 100 years later when they arrived from America; derived from General Ambrose Burnside who sported a fine pair of side whiskers – as they were previously known.