Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Informal Other. Usually used in the phrase a whole nother, as in the sentence That's a whole nother story.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Same as neither.
Wiktionary
- pro. Caribbean Neither.
- adj. Caribbean Neither.
- adv. obsolete Nor.
- pro. obsolete Another.
- adj. Different, other. (Now usually in a whole nother)
GNU Webster's 1913
- conj. obsolete Neither; nor.
- adj. Other; -- variant spelling used mostly in the phrase a whole nother (i. e., a completely different), as though formed by splitting the word “another”.
Etymologies
- Old English nōhwæþer. Compare neither, nauther. (Wiktionary)
- From alteration of another (interpreted as a nother). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Cause I should expect you'd give me somethin 'nother and make a great man of me!”
“But he presently heard the door of the locked room open, a man's voice, slightly elevated by liquor and opposition, saying, "I know what's due from one gen'leman to 'nother" -- a querulous, objecting voice saying,”
“To the ranter who whines about people saying" nother "- learn the difference between”
“However, even though you would probably not like to acknowledge it, we have a whole "nother" half of our state to the east.”
“Then there's the issue of bands who were one-hit wonders in the U.S. (or two-hit wonders) but are known on a whole nother level ( "nother" should be a world) in the UK.”
“Thursday, April 12, 2001 x 2 - Key word here is 'nother”
“He was great source of worriment to my Mammy, ole lady Lucy Price and 'nother 'oman, ole lady Lucy Charles.”
“He shall pay that cent one way or 'nother 'fore he gets through.”
“Don't eat with yer fingers -- don't grab no vittles off one 'nother's plates; don't reach out for nothin', but wait till yer asked, 'n' if you never _git_ asked don't git up and grab it.”
“Don't eat with yer fingers -- don't grab no vittles off one 'nother's plates; don't reach out for nothin', but wait till yer asked, 'n if yer never git asked don't git up and grab it -- don't spill nothin' on the table cloth, or like's not Mis 'Bird' ll send yer away from the table.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘nother’.
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WWF WTF?
Ever play "Words With Friends" with someone and they throw down some strange, unlikely group of letters that makes even the most mild and squeaky clean tongued person say "whiskey tango foxtrot"? ...
oorie, sangar, merl, cwm, doum, weir, jura, invar, lawine, tapa, waw, shog and 376 more...
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The Other
Anything with to do with the word "other," or any sort of otherness (including words with the letters o-t-h-e-r, in that order, in their definitions).
other, Constitutive Other, The Other, Other, The Others, otherwise, othering, another, otherworldly, other-worldly, otherways, otherness and 35 more...
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randoms
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misspelled
misspellings i like
lectric, prolly, nother, dunno, cozza, lil, l33t, ur, rawk, dood, lemme, friggin and 20 more...
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Sort of Made-Up Words
And phrases
pick-able-on-able, sneaky like a duck, awkward starfish, confuzzled, absotively, posilutely, fuzzing, cat blech, alphapathetical, sadness, estiguess, beardly and 5 more...
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bitslayer's Words
Tweets
Looking for tweets for nother.
slumry Oh, that's good! Perhaps I should reconsider all of my cranky judgements. Jun 14, 2007
uselessness According to dictionary.com, it's a parallel symbolic mathematics system. But I doubt they know that. ;-) Jun 14, 2007
slumry Yes it sounds like "a nother," but when one hears oneself referring to this thing called a "nother," what does the person believe a "nother" to be? Jun 14, 2007
uselessness True, of course, though one could argue that another is pronounced more like a nother than an other, due to the emphasis on the second syllable instead of the first. Doesn't make it right, but I can see where the mistake comes from. Jun 14, 2007
slumry Exactly, Uselessness, but the "n" should have been awarded to the "a" in the divorce settlement. "An whole other story," while infelicitous, would make sense. Do you think I have standing to petition the court to restore that n to its rightful owner?
This has annoyed me for the last twenty years or so because of what it reveals about people's insensitivity to the language they speak--is it not obvious that "another" means "an other?" I once mentioned this to a well educated friend who prided herself on grammatical correctness, and she saw nothing wrong with it!
I know, I know, this is one of the ways language evolves--it is every bit as messy as making sausage or legislation. Furthermore, perhaps I should dig a little deeper in my psyche to understand why I have carried arround a grievence over a word for twenty years. That, however, is a horse of a nother feather.
I will continue to take comfort in the word metanalysis. It is nice that everything has a name. I suppose that if I want to be a real purist, I should eschew the word nickname. I do not want to be a real purist. Jun 14, 2007
slumry Funny usage out of the mouth of a babe (years ago--he will be married in a week) He nearly fell from a slide. After she caught him his mother said "Oh, Worth, you lost your balance." He pondered that for a day, then sidled up to his uncle and announced glumly "I have no balance. I lost my balance." Jun 14, 2007
slumry Being hayve--that is funny. I had to stare at it a bit before I groked it (or is it "grokked."
How about using the adjective "becoming" as an adverb, as in "That looks becoming on you" rather than "That is becoming to you" Ouch. It hurts my sensibilities. Jun 14, 2007
reesetee Much like kids who say they are "being hayve." :-) Jun 14, 2007
uselessness "That's a whole nother story."
A corruption of the word another, where a is an article and nother has been divorced from it to become an adjective. Separate the two with a modifier and the deconstruction is complete. Jun 14, 2007
slumry It may be metanalysis but it still gives me the heebie jeebies Jun 14, 2007