“That’s a Whole NOTHER Ballgame!” Nother?

Have you ever had a conversation with someone when he/she suddenly says something that sounds grammatically incorrect yet it kind of seems correct?  Despite what your talking about, you immediately refocus your thoughts on the one specific sentence uttered rather than the original topic of conversation. You could be in a heated political debate, ready to hammer home your point when you’re suddenly blindsided by a misused word or phrase by your fellow debater.  Now I’m no wordsmith and I’m sure I frequently butcher the english language.  In fact, it may be fun for you to count my grammatical and spelling errors in this very post.  As an odds maker, I’d set the over and under at 12.

 

*NOTHER

Recently I was speaking with a friend in my neighborhood, when he broke out the word NOTHER.  “That’s a whole NOTHER ball of wax”, he said.  Have you ever heard this word used in a sentence?  I bet most of you have.  If you haven’t, after reading this post, I guarantee you’ll will in the near future.  Trust me – it’s everywhere!

WHO ELSE  USES THE WORD NOTHER?

Everyone!  Professional athletes love to use it in post game interviews.  After defeating the Miami Heat in the NBA finals the other night, one Golden Warrior explained why his team looked so good in their victory and so bad in their previous game when they lost to the Heat by a large margin.  He said, “When we can hit our three pointers and tighten up our defense we’re a whole NOTHER team.”  Yikes!

Politicians are infamous for using NOTHER.  “We may have lost the New Hampshire primary but fear not!  Iowa is a whole NOTHER fight I know we’ll win!”

Cable New Anchors are chronic offenders of the NOTHER Bug.  Surely NOTHER isn’t written on their teleprompter… Right?  “As we take a look at the northern counties in Virginia, one can see that voters support the democrats, however the southern counties are a whole NOTHER demographic.”  

Meteorologists often give the day’s forecast and followed by the long range forecast.  “Don’t let today’s rain dampen your spirits.  There’s a whole NOTHER system approaching the southeast bringing low humidity and dry weather for the remainer of the week.”

Oh No!  I’ve heard My family use it.  In fact, just last Friday my wife made pizza.  As we were devouring the first pie, my younger son reached for the last piece much to my other son’s chagrin.  My daughter, the peace maker, said, “Relax, there’s a whole nother pizza in the oven.”  Oh no!  NOTHER has spread to my family!

Surely I would never use NOTHER in a sentence.  Especially since I cringe whenever I hear it.  For me, hearing the word NOTHER used in a sentence is like nails on a chalkboard!  Eww.

Well, I kid you not!  Just three hours ago I was helping my son fix his bike.  We couldn’t find a proper sized allen wrench to adjust his handle bars.  As I was searching through my tool box on the other side of the house with no luck, I screamed to my son, “I HAVE A WHOLE NOTHER set of wrenches in the car!”  NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!  It’s an epidemic!   (This is what put me over the edge and lead me to writing this post.  I’m hoping that expressing my concern in words is the remedy to cure my case of the NOTHER bug.)

Have you ever heard the word FUS-trated used instead FRUS-trated?

That’s a whole nother blog post!

*Upon researching nother, I learned that it was misused so often that Dictionary.com said the heck with it!  Lets just make it a word.

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