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From: jc@mit-athena.UUCP (John Chambers)
Newsgroups: net.flame,net.nlang
Subject: Re: A whole nother story
Message-ID: <138@mit-athena.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 29-Mar-85 10:52:46 EST
Article-I.D.: mit-athe.138
Posted: Fri Mar 29 10:52:46 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 1-Apr-85 23:48:09 EST
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Organization: MIT Project Athena
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Xref: watmath net.flame:9054 net.nlang:2819

What's all this about infixes?  I missed the start of this one,
but I can't resist....

It seems fairly obvious that "another" is just a run-together
word pair, analogous to "upstairs" or "doghouse" or "into".
The grammatically correct place to attach an adverb in a
phrase like "an other" is before the thing it modifies: "a
whole other".  This is a routine phrase in English writings
over many centuries.  But what happened to the 'n'?

Look up the etymology of "orange".  According to at least one
handy dictionary, it had an initial "n" originally (in Spanish).  
But in English, "a norange" sounds a whole lot like "an orange", 
so....

Anyhow, I think "a whole nother" is kinda cute.  I betcha that's
why it caught on.

What do you make a napple pie out of?   Ready???

Pie napples, of course!

-- 

			John Chambers [...!decvax!mit-athena]

If you're not part of the solution, then you're part of the precipitate.