next
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: enpr: nĕkst
ipa: /nɛkst/
rhymes: -ɛkst
Forms: form: neest
form: neist
form: nex
form: nex'
Etymology: From Middle English nexte, nexste, nixte, from Old English nīehsta, nīehste, etc., inflected forms of nīehst (“nearest, next”), superlative form of nēah (“nigh”) (the comparative would become near), corresponding to Proto-Germanic *nēhwist (“nearest, closest”); equivalent to nigh + -est.
Cognate with Saterland Frisian naist (“next”), Dutch naast (“next to”), German nächster (“next”), Yiddish נעקסט (nekst, “next”), Danish næste (“next”), Elfdalian nest (“by, near”), Icelandic næst (“next”), Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk neste (“next”), Swedish näst, nästa (“next”), Persian نزد (nazd, “near, with”).
Compare typologically Latin proximus (“nearest, next”).
Senses: examples: text: The man in the next bunk kept me awake all night with his snoring.
text: She lives a mile or two away, in the next village.
text: I live in the next house to the Grand Hotel.
text: Philander went into the next room, which was just a lean-to hitched on to the end of the shanty, and came back with a salt mackerel that dripped brine like a rainstorm.
ref: 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter VIII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
glosses: Nearest in place or position, having nothing similar intervening; adjoining.
examples: text: A prophet I, Madam; and I speak the truth the next way: […]
ref: c. 1604–1605 (date written), William Shakespeare, “All’s Well, that Ends Well”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):
text: The road to resolution, lies by doubt:
"The next way home's the farthest way about."
ref: 1777, Francis Quarles, Emblems Divine and Moral: Together with Hieroglyphics of the Life of Man, page 152, epigram 2:
glosses: Nearest in place or position, having nothing similar intervening; adjoining.
Most direct, or shortest or nearest in distance or time.
examples: text: Please turn to the next page.
text: On Wednesday next, I'm going to Spain.
text: the next chapter; the next week; the Sunday next before Easter
text: The man was driven by his love for money and his desire to become the next Bill Gates.
text: "[…]You patriotic?" / "I guess so, as much as the next guy," I said, wondering how the hell I could shake him.
ref: 1945, Yank: the army weekly, volume 4, page 96:
glosses: Nearest in order, succession, or rank; immediately following (or sometimes preceding) in order.
examples: text: next friend
text: And if a man purchase land in fee simple and die without issue, he which is his next cousin collaterall of the whole blood, how farre so ever he be from him in degree, (de quel pluis long degree qu'il soit), may inherite and have the land ...
ref: 1628, Coke, On Littleton (10. a. 10. b. §2), quoted in 1890, John Bethell Uhle, Current Comment and Legal Miscellany, page 250
text: Thomas Humphrey Doleman died the 30th of August 1712, an infant, intestate and without issue; Lewis the next nephew died the 17th of April 1716, an infant about sixteen years old, having left his mother Mary Webb, ...
ref: 1793, William Peere Williams, Samuel Compton Cox, Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the High Court of Chancery, and of Some Special Cases Adjudged in the Court of King's Bench [1695-1735]: De Term. S. Trin. 1731, page 602:
text: If it be a property, it is a new species, unknown to the civil law, the common law, and the statute law; there is no medium, it must be, if it goes to her next kin, because it is absolute property in her. There can be no distribution of personal property ...
ref: 1874, Thomas Sergeant, William Rawle, Reports of Cases Adjudged in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, page 23:
topics: law
glosses: Nearest in relationship. (See also next of kin.)
Synonyms: subsequent