A Whole 'Nother Mystery

(investigating a maybe-grammatical-maybe-not English phrase)

There are a few words, phrases, and sounds that set off a little alert in my brain whenever I hear them. A lot of them have to do with pronunciation, like how “with you” becomes “witchu” (perhaps the subject of a future edition). But another English quirk that has been piquing my interest as of late is how we use and spell the following phrase:

We say “a whole ‘nother” so easily in every day life (at least for speakers of American English — non-US readers, how often do you encounter this phrase?!). But there’s something about it that makes it so difficult to write. What’s the deal?

First, A Survey

To launch my investigation, I conducted a very informal poll (sample size = 4) asking how people would transcribe an audio clip of me saying the following phrase: “Well that’s a whole ‘nother issue.”

One of my respondents typed it the same way that I would: “a whole ‘nother issue.” But to my surprise, the other THREE respondents typed it out as: “a whole another issue.” This was especially interesting to me because I made a very concerted effort to say the word like “nother” and not “another.”

I asked them why they decided to type “another” even though I said it like “nother.” One reported that they “formalized it because they were typing,” originally thinking to transcribe it as “whole other,” but feeling like “another” was more appropriate due to the presence of the “n” sound. Another respondent wondered if two grammatically correct phrases got merged somehow to make something that didn’t sound quite right.

Clearly, there is something right about this phrase, because we wouldn’t bat an eye if we heard someone use this phrase in a casual conversation. But when it’s time to write it down, we suddenly doubt the grammaticality of it all. And this doubt even has the potential to lead us to plop in a phoneme that isn’t even in the phrase that we’re hearing (the “a” in “another”)!

I don’t tend to make overly strict judgements about grammaticality (in a very broad sense: if enough people are saying it a certain way and they’re consistently doing so, then they might not be wrong). But I did want to get to the bottom of this phrase. How did it come about? And why does it confuse us so much?

The Origin of “A Whole ‘Nother”

If you look at many sources on the internet, you’ll find a word popping up to describe exactly what’s going on with this phrase: tmesis. This is used to describe when an infix (not prefix, which goes before, or suffix, which goes after) is inserted inside of a compound word. We hear this commonly with swear words: “abso-f*cking-lutely.”

And tmesis seems like a very reasonable explanation. “Whole” is used as an adverb and is inserted into a word that we definitely know is real: “another.” But I wanted to do a little more digging to see if there were alternate explanations.

And lo and behold: there was one! It turns out that “nother” has had a fairly long and turbulent history as a word — carrying multiple meanings over time, but an actual word nonetheless.

Without getting too much into detail about the ways that “nother” was once used, here’s an example from 1835 in which “nother” functions in a way that is somewhat similar to the phrase we know and love:

"I’ll now answer one nother question about what’s the best way of keepin the democratic party in my quarter from splittin.” (D. Crockett, Acct. Col. Crockett’s Tour).

The first example of “a whole ‘nother” provided by the OED hails from 1890—

“I don’t know what we shall do if we have to be a whole ‘nother day in the house and in the dark.” (M. L. Molesworth, Story Spring Morning).

Interestingly, the OED’s examples of this phrase from 1890 to 1910 all use “a whole ‘nother” with an apostrophe before “nother.” But their next example from 1963 is written as “a whole nother,” sans apostrophe. (I don’t have much of an answer for this change. Any guesses, linguistic sleuths?!)

So while tmesis initially sounds like the most acceptable explanation for how we got to “a whole ‘nother,” I don’t think it tells the whole story of the phrase. What’s more, there’s something about it that prevents us from accepting it as grammatically correct — even if it’s fairly commonly heard.

This Newsletter is Pro-”A Whole ‘Nother”

In an article about the phrase published on Merriam-Webster, they do note an interesting observation: that when it does appear in written text, it’s often to replicate colloquial — and perhaps uneducated — speech and writing.

But amongst (American) English speakers of all ages and backgrounds, it’s heard and used quite a bit!

One resource that I turn to as an English teacher quite often is a website called YouGlish. You can type in a word or phrase in English and it provides you with an endless stream of YouTube videos in which that word is used. It’s a really helpful tool for providing students with examples of how words are pronounced. (For example, I used it in a lesson to show how “should have” sometimes becomes “shoulda.” I would definitely vet the videos at home instead of just pulling it up during class, though — some of the videos are kind of funky!)

When I typed in “a whole nother” on YouGlish, I got a whopping 933 results. The first was an interview with Michelle Obama where she used the phrase. The second was someone telling a story about how she built a medieval suit. The third was a senator from North Dakota talking about property taxes.

So it seems unfair to confine “a whole nother” to just being a colloquial, informal, and somewhat grammatically invalid phrase. To me, it reflects an interesting and perfectly legitimate evolution in the English language. And I would love to see this phrase gain a little more legitimacy, instead of the bad rap that it gets for being ungrammatical.

But when it comes to the question, “to apostrophe, or not to apostrophe?” That’s a whole ‘nother issue.

Thanks for reading!

What are your thoughts on this phrase? How would you transcribe the phrase, and do you feel a similar resistance when it comes to making judgements on its grammaticality? Can you think of other “colloquial” or “informal” phrases that seem perfectly fine in conversation but are strange in writing?

Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you next Tuesday!