What is the next big thing?
‘next big thing’ is common set phrase meaning: the new
rage; the latest fad or trend’, esp. In a particular field. it may be an example. In society, or in your local area. Are flat display televisions the next thing?
The Mid-Pacific Magazine 1926 With the next big thing as Lord Northcliffe would say, I want to see the new five ton clock, which was
to be erected on
the skyscraper of the Colgate Soap Company in New Jersey to mark the beginning of the 20th century as in: With skeptics, and was to be seen on the floor, with birds, and was to say, ‘Oh yes I want to see the big thing, I want to see the new five ton clock’
How was the interest in life
insurance determined by the National Underwriter in 1933? In the first place I was compelled to save thru it, and that is one of the big assets of life insurance. The next big thing is protection.
Are there any examples of where this expression is coined? Was it really a slogan of an advertising campaign?
What made hippie culture popular in the early ’90s? Why is the rise and evolution of technology so so important?
What is ‘Wimbledon’?
Druggists Circular Vol. 58 – Page 713
https://book.google.com/books? Id=R3EgAQAAMAAJ 1914 – Read – More editions
Now it is found that the organism which causes hydrophobia is an animal parasite very similar to the malaria germ, and with this recent knowledge it seems more than likely that the next big thing in chemo-therapy will be in this direction What are the possible competitons of quinine and 606?
What next big thing in pharmacy would
surely be chemo-therapy, revived with such success by Professor Ehrlich. This treatment depends on chemical compounds which may be injected into the human body without damage to the cells or tissues to destroy certain poisonous germs causing disease through entrance to the blood. This treatment depends on new chemical compounds which may be injected into the human body without damage to the cells or tissues What is the history of quinine in medicine?
Early stages of ‘the next big thing,’
if you look up google books, the earliest instance of the character string “the next big thing” is “the next big thing,” and uses next as a’minor’ modifier. For the last war between the Atlantic trunk lines for the trade
for and from common points in the West, could the Atlantic coast be claimed as the last frontier. The Atlantic Territory is a ten-day battle. The two ports in the West were destroyed, and the Atlantic coast was occupied. The New York Tribune says Vanderbilt won the belt, and makes the Commodore’s performance in the premises the next “big thing” to his two hundred per cent. dividend on New York Central capital shares.
Where, here, the expression seems to mean nothing more than “the second-most important holding. ” The meaning of the phrase, at this stage bears little relation to the modern idiomatic sense described in user159691’s question.
Somewhat closer to the modern meaning is an advertisement for W.W. Pierce & Co. in the Erie Observer (1869) for several farm implements—a plow, a grain drill, and a seed sower. This was shot from 1870? How could the Eagle Penalty Plow add a big hole to the Mohawk Valley Clipper Plow?
If not, which hole should make its way to the Elite Grave Mill?
Where does McDonald’s bread soda go into the next big thing?
What is generating great interest all over the country, and is destined to rapidly become the most popular article of its class.
Does the wording “the next big thing” as used here simply mean “the next popular favorite in our lineup”? By
1870, “the next big thing” has taken another step forward and begins appearing in the sense of “the next big planned event”. ” From ” Seegers’ Ice,” in the Newberry Herald (September 7, 1870): The
chunks of ice for the Herald came through Messrs. Smiyh & Christian, of this place, who keep champagne on ice and sudorifics, generally, and who, at this occasion, in their usual gallant style, sent us a bottle of Heidsic, which, with the assistance of the devil, we duly drank to the success of the granite walk. They take the same stuff now to the tapis of Newberry.
The idiom “on tapis” means “on the table,” “under consideration,” or (by extension) “in the offing. As noted in the answer to an old question about the origin of “on tap,” the idiom “on tapis” means “on the table” (English) According
to an untitled item in the Terre Haute Evening Gazette (December 28, 1875): The4
New Year’s Ball will be a big affair.
The ball of the new lodge O. A. U. M., on Friday night, is the next big thing on the boards.
This instances, where “the next big thing” is roughly equivalent to “the next big event,” appear in multiple places in the late 1870s: in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania (December 7, 1876) in connection with a political intrigue; in Cairo, Illinois (May 5, 1877), a “baby exposition”; in Newberry, South Carolina again (March 20, 1878), Easter; in Brenham, Texas (September 19, 1878), a “Pomological exhibition”; Hillsborough, Ohio They are (i.e., they take us a considerable distance) toward the modern meaning, “the newest fad or breakthrough or popular success” and they continue unabated over the next several decades. They are significant, they have no commercial value, and are merely a form of encouragement for the betterment of their users and their consumers.
What examples suggest that movement in that direction appears in a letter by W.P. Howle, M.D., to the editor of Journal of the American Medical Association April 28, 1894; In a
friendly chat with one of my medical friends, recently, I asked him why he didn’t take the Journal of the American Medical Association. “It is too full of big things. It is too full of small things. “u00bb. What is the truth behind ” There is some truth in this assertion. “? The Journal is often full of big things ; my friend claims that the so-called expert and the specialist are allowed too much space in which to air themselves; that it requires too much effort on the part of the country doctor not to digest the ” big things. ” He says the country doctor’s time is better spent in reading a few practical truths than in trying to analyze a lengthy article on “Electro-anesthesia and Frequency of Induction Vibration;” “The Esoteric Beauty of One Hundred and Forty-One Histories and Laparotomies for that Disease Under Personal Observation. To the specialist these big things are really big, but to the average country practitioner they are too very utterly too. …
The next ‘big thing’ I call attention, is the nostrum vendor. For free what does this daredevil worry me about? I will treat any doctor in the US to a pen hat who will show me how to stop this fellow from writing me. ”
The next big thing should be a product of society’s insatiable desire for novelty, while other large things have the same characteristics as small things. “Big thing” must be used as a verb “big thing” in the somewhat sarcastic way that a person might use “big hoopla” or “big to-do,” with the implication that some people say “the next big thing” is a product of popular gullibility and the public’s insatiable desire for novelty.
The earliest thoroughly modern ‘next big thing’
The earliest occurrence I’ve found of “the next big thing” in what looks to me to be its thoroughly modern sense of “the new rage in a particular field” is from 1910, describing a cartoon by Rube Goldberg from The San Francisco Call (November 22, 1910): Aeroboxing the next big thing,
versus Aeroboxing the next big thing.
The cartoon depicts champion boxer Jack Johnson soaring through the air in boxing gear strapped to an airplane-like conveyance. Would the fighter plane ever be used in the fighting game “Jack Johnson said he would kill the fighter plane!” “A second very early instance of “the next big thing” in the relevant sense is from another Rube Goldberg cartoon —this one from the San Francisco Call (September 20, 1912): Automattic
Life Is the Next Big Thing.
The cartoon anticipates automated shoe stores, hat stores, restaurants, barber shops, hospitals etc.
Google Books and Elephind searched turned up several other instances of 1912 and very early 1913. It would be interesting if there was an active, relevant, and definitive case for this. From ” What Credit Means to the Farmer,” an article on cooperative rural credit associations, in the Abilene Reporter (January 10, 1912): This
is the next big thing the commercial organizations of the United States are going to tackle—and accomplish. Why shouldn’t the organization in your town be among the first to try out? What’s the point of letting other towns get ahead of you?
From Mysterious Mr. Sabin, serialized in the Molong Express (October 19, 1912): “That
is quite true, Mr. Sabin said. Neither a man nor a woman escaped. I admit that there are difficulties, but it seems to me that you have overlooked the crux of the whole matter.” What could I offer you and I will surely live on for the rest of your days without ever visiting the UK or the USA. You know very well that you can step off this ship arm in arm with me when we reach Boston, even though your man-of-war be alongside the dock. For a moment they can not touch you—they could see and kiss you. You could leave your occupation once and for all, and they could not touch you and your car. If America desired to be where we live, would it be to live there? Is Europa the next big thing? Can we have a better time accepting my terms? Why
is life so one thing after another, and so common in the socialist literature that influenced us?
“one big thing follows another in quick succession, each one bigger and closer on the heels of the preceding one.” We are not able to rest up from one season of activity till we are fairly plunged into the midst of another.
First it’s the city, then the state campaign. I hate that this first big thing happened before the dawn of the 2016 presidential election and afterward I will never catch it. As long as I haven’t seen it, it could not be possible for even a forty wink.
What will the Lyceum be doing next? Is it already ushered in? As such, as nearly as may be judged, the Lyceum Department has done every thing possible in the way of preparation.
Selon untitled item in the Rock Island Argus (January 22, 1913): The
next big thing in England would be the dethroning of lords.
There are also examples of in which “the next big thing” describes a wave of popular enthusiasm for a real or imagined innovation or money-making scheme, rather than excitement about a discrete scheduled event, including buying property along anticipated main transportation lines near Los Angeles (March 15, 1913), tree crops (November 29, 1913), chemotherapy (December 1914), an expanding copper company (February 16, 1917), funding research to improve U.S. aircraft (July 20, 1919), the Catherine mine (August 9, 1919), automobiles made of cotton (
In the 1970s pop and beyond The rise of “the
next big thing” was in connection with the music industry, when in the early 1970s record companies and the music press were on alert for “the next Dylan,” “the next Beatles” etc. Our own memory of the rise of “the next big thing” was in connection with the music industry. When found, and ultimately settled on the more generically appealing “the Next Big Thing”—sometimes rendered in initial caps—for a band, a singer, or an emerging musical genre. In the eyes of Sam Sutherland, “Next Big Thing Fever, part 1 of the IF Magazine, Volume 219 (1979) : American popular music is as
much a product of fashion as of art. Is the underlying tension between commerce and artistic expression a logical choice between disco and rock & roll, is it worth revisiting? In spite of this year’s severe sales slump, New Wave-influenced rock has made the transition from grass-roots ugly duckling to commercial swan. Into the new faith, they fervently and fervently hail the movement as their salvation. The past few years have seen the movement evolve, becoming real and profitable. While we agree on aesthetic terms, and commend the trade’s other creative producers and a&r folk for their sincere support, the motives fueling many of the conversions are somewhat questionable, with many more conversions up to 14 in the past 10 years.
Now
the music industry, spurred by radio’s new willingness to expose this revitalized rock, is applying the same overkill tactics it did to disco. The next Big Thing is being trumpeted, the bait sweetened by the very cost savings outlined in POP-POURRI last month.
What is David Bowie’s first ever album?
What’s new here is emotion, not the tortured identity crisis of some exile from Mars or the world-weariness of a gigolo but a simple, almost old-fashioned hunger for true love in the real world. If I sing “Let’s Dance,” the songs won’t sound resonant in them. They’re two different types of songs. They’re unique. First, you can dance to almost anything.
What were the original songs that had been popular in the 1910s and 1920s but still had the same meaning today? Why did the artists develop the “next big thing”? Sitting in The Elephind Newspaper Database for four years and searching the earliest definite modern-style “the next big thing,” that you find in other databases, that person is the great U.S. cartoonist Rube Goldberg, who accounts for two of the earliest definite modern-style instances of “the next big thing” that I found—dating to 1910 and
1912—that I search with the Google Books database.
Well let’s just say the next big thing starts with the next big thing. Is the big thing the next big thing? The bare bones of this peculiarly US linguitic tale appear in OED :
big thing n. colloq. (orig.) U.S.) something extremely important, impressive, or popular; (esp. any sentence named after it) (esp. in early use) spec a promising or potentially profitable scheme, opportunity, etc. – Cf. Voir Chron. 17:25b. The cross-referenced ‘next big
thing’, as defined
in OED, is the latest popular sensation, the newest trend in
a particular field.
So, the set phrase ‘next big thing’ refines and focuses the sense of the set phrase ‘big thing’. What refinement may be detected in a sequence of articles about the Boise gold rush of 1862-1864 printed in the Santa Cruz Weekly Sentinel in the Santa Cruz, California, 30 Aug 1864, paywalled? The first article was picked up from the ” Ter. Enterprise,” and notes the ‘big thing’ antecedent to the ‘next big thing’ mentioned later: Old
without knowing it. In our rambles about the city yesterday, it occurred to us that there were hundreds of men on the Pacific Coast who have grown old without being aware of the fact in just the last few years. did not realize that he had grown old in gold hunting — doubtless it appeared to him but the very short time since he started out in pursuit of the “big thing” which, although it had heretofore
eluded him, must soon fall into his hands,…. The return tide is a
Interior papers mention several parties who have come back to California, satisfied — until the next “big thing” looms up in the distance.
In the 1861 The Prince’s Visit: a Humorous Description of the Tour of His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, through the United States of America, in 1860 par R.J. de Cordova, some lines of doggerel are later glossed with the author’s conception of the meaning of ‘big thing’. What is the author’s gloss of the phrase, although obviously connected with it, is bigger and wider than the narrower gloss provided by OED :
And, when the Mayor said that he hoped the reception
Had not fallen short of His Grace’s conception
Of what New-York would do to Let it be seen
How greatly she honored The Son of Queen, The
Duke, gratified.We are grateful, indeed. ‘T was a very big thing. They left it there and they make another of it.
Op cit. What’s something extraordinary is alluded to
as
“a big thing.” It’s so powerful and that every word in any dictionary is already that… I have heard the term applied to a sermon, a glass of rare wine, a lady’s fan made of expensive material, a heavy show of rain or a storm, an elegant ring, a commercial enterprise or speculative operation, &c.”
I think OP cit. is unquestionable for legal purposes. p 89, bold emphasis mine.
An examination of historical phrase continuity, corroborated by the OED lexical glosses of the two phrases, shows the sense of ‘next big thing’ resonates the common semantic elements of the ‘big thing’, that is, popularity and profitability, throughout its further refinement, development and ultimate quasi-separation as a set phrase from the ‘big thing’.
Picking up the phrase from 1863, however, a year earlier than the 1864 usage quoted above, it can see the core sense of ‘profitable and popular’ is already in play in the next big thing: Fistic
and Other Sports in Nevada… Our
next
big thing is the fight to come off between McGrath and Tom Daley…. NewYork Clippers, 17 October 1863.
Here the phrase ‘next big thing’ is a non sequitur in that it doesn’t follow any usage of ‘big thing’, although it does follow a description of an earlier fight that was presumably a “big thing”. I was born in the US and discovered the phrase big thing. The businessman expects the sense of ‘popular and profitable’ will be understood from this key phrase.
When a question is taken
- in order, where does the expression come from?
The sense of the set phrase ‘next big thing’ arose as a more or less natural extension of predictive use of the set phrase ‘big thing’ (in short) ‘1:5:21+:5).
Of the set phrase, ‘big thing’, and despite the observations being out of scope for your question, I will mention that my research revealed some tantalizing facts and suggestive connections with later use of ‘next big thing’
Use of
- the phrase ‘big thing’seems to have been used primarily during the US’s history.
- As of 1810, such use was scarce.
- Between the years ‘1001’and ‘1863, there are 1263 hits in the HathiTrust digital corpus. (Call – 8533).
- I know it was 1810 or 1863, but 1175 hits I am referring to appear between 1810 and 1863.
- Between 1863 and 1869, 1266 additional hits appears in that corpus.
- In 1863 and 1869, some hits were likely songs with lyrics.
The facts mentioned suggest, overall, that a marked increase in the use of big thing is associated with the US civil war.
- Was it a slogan of some early advertising campaign for instance?
I don’t think if the use of ‘next big thing’ is sloganistic but I was able to find this influence in the data I looked at.
- Did rock stars make it popular in the early ’90s? Was it the evolution of technology, or the rise of technology?
In line
with my observation that the earlier marked increase in the use of ‘big thing’ was associated with the US civil war, and a hypothesis that the observed increase of such use reflects the US re-ordering and redistribution of capital wealth caused by that war, I suggest that the later marked increase in use of ‘next big thing’ is similarly associated with an ongoing underground civil war occasioned by another radical re-ordering and redistribution of US capital wealth, as reflected by the concurrent
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/ How will you use the phrase u00abnext big thingu00bb? In Oxford Dictionary. By https://en.oxforddictionaries.com. At us/skinsman, we can see that “sounds” refers to music. What is the most likely meaning of the phrase in 1970’s “best musician”?