a whole other question

[Benjamin Fortson]

I don't know if blending is required to explain this, given that
"nother" has been kicking around in the language since Caxton, or before. I don't
know how long "whole nother" has been around, though.

On Wed, 9 Oct 2002, Gerald Cohen wrote:

>     In dealing with odd syntactic constructions I first look to see if
> syntactic blending might provide the answer. Originally there might
> have been sentences of the type "That's another thing entirely" +
> "That's a whole new thing (e.g., to be dealing with)" blending to
> "That's a whole nother thing" and "That's a whole other thing."
>
>     Then by extension to baseball: "Wal it's a whole nother [also:
> new] ball game, folks," (not just a grand-slam HR but one that ties
> up the game in the late innings).