Confused about the phrase "one after another"

"One thing after another" means many problems occurred in linear succession. Like a line of problems. This morning, getting to work was problem after problem. My alarm didn't go off (problem 1), my phone was dead (problem 2), I couldn't find my keys (problem 3), my car tire was flat (problem 4), there was construction on the road (problem 5), and when I got to work, I forgot I wasn't wearing pants! (problem 6).

It seems like you're thinking of this as there being a "one thing" as well as a second "another thing", and that there's an implication that the "one" happens first. But that's not what this means. It's just two things that happened in sequence, "one" doesn't indicate the order in which they happened. It's like "someone" is a person, not indicating that that person is first. The "one" implies more that each thing is discrete, and there's no suggestion the things are related to each other. It's "one thing after another" not "first thing after the second" -- if it were, the order would indeed be very confusing! And of course, as an idiom, it doesn't even really mean there are two things that happened, just that the person got caught up in whatever was going on that waylaid them from doing the thing they intended to do (go to the shop).

What

Ok, so you seem to be confused by the use of the word “one”. In this context it does *not* mean “thing #2 happened, and then thing #1 happened.” “One” can sometimes indicate the first in a series, but in this case it is referring to the individuality of the events (that they are not inherently linked together). It’s more like all the things are lined up like dominos, occurring in a sequence. They aren’t happening all at the *same* time, but the time between one thing occurring and the next is (or at least feels) small.

"Another" does not mean something that *literally* happens after, but something that *syntactically* happens after another. Therefore, it does not matter which *happened* first, only which is *said* first.

It's an idiom -- it doesn't have to make perfect sense literally, but you're right about the idiomatic meaning.

I was delayed by something. That something itself happened after a different thing that previously delayed me (and that second event was after yet another thing that delayed me, I was so delayed!)

One after another = There's one, then afterwards, there's one more

"One" and "another" only mean that the two things that happened are different; it doesn't imply which order they happened in. In this idiom, "another" happened first, then "one thing" happened after that. To put it another way, "one" and "another" only describe the order in which we refer to the events in the sentence (referential order), not to the order in which they actually happened (chronological order). But the referential order and the chronological order often coincide because we tend to talk about a series of events in chronological order. We could also construct sentences, though, in which they're not chronological. "One man was here, and another was here before that."

"One thing" just means "a thing" - it doesn't mean "first thing".

One thing - “a thing happened” after - “at a later time” another “a different thing happened” So it’s literally “a thing happened after a different thing happened”. It’s a bit of a set phrase in English. It means “many things happened, and as soon as I finished one of the things, a new thing started”. It’s commonly used to express frustration or being overwhelmed.

Don't overthink it. It's a set phrase, meaning a series of things. That's all.

Because grammatically, that's how *after* and *another* work. When you use *after* in a context of *order of events*, the second thing necessarily happened first, and we can only use *another* in reference to something previously mentioned, so there is no other way to phrase it. "Another thing after one" simply makes no grammar sense whatsoever, because we can't use *another* in a sentence like that, since it specifically means 'one other instance of the thing previously mentioned/inferred'.

When we say "one thing after another," it’s more like a shorthand for "one thing happened, and then immediately another thing happened after it." The "another" isn’t actually coming before the first it’s just the way English bundles the idea of a continuous, annoying chain of events. A personal example: Last week, I was late to class because my alarm didn’t go off, then my bus was late, and then I forgot my notebook and had to run back home. I’d say, "Ugh, everything went wrong one thing after another!" It just means problems kept piling up.

In “one thing after another,” the key is to see it as a *sequence*. The phrase actually starts with the first thing, and then emphasizes that *other things kept happening afterward*, almost piling up. Think of it like a line: one thing happens, then *another*, then *another* and they all cause delays or problems. The word “another” here doesn’t mean it came *before* the first thing. It just means it followed it. You can imagine someone sighing and saying, “Ugh, it was one thing after another today” they’re expressing that there was a series of back-to-back issues, not that the order is reversed.

'One thing' does not imply 'first thing'. It's 'one thing' as in a discrete event.