query--("next to nobody")

[Beverly Flanigan]

No, it was actually the first line of a newspaper article in the local
rag--something like "Next to nobody would deny that . . ." (I don't have
the nsp at hand).  The more I think about it, the more familiar it becomes;
I may have heard it, and used it, myself in the distant past.  But it's
been a long time ago, if so, which is why it struck me as strange.

At 03:37 PM 9/16/2006, you wrote:
>  Maybe "next to nobody" was preceded by "next to nothing" (= almost
> nothing), where "next to" would make sense. E.g. the figure "one
> triillionth" would be figuratively next to zero.  Then "next to nobody"
> could have arisen by analogy to "next to nothing."
>
>Gerald Cohen
>
>________________________________
>
>From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Michael Quinion
>Sent: Sat 9/16/2006 11:26 AM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Re: query
>
>
>
> > Here's a new one to me:  "Next to nobody wants higher taxes" (or whatever),
> > meaning "Almost nobody."  Where does this come from?
>
>It seems to be of some antiquity, to judge from examples. The OED has one
>instance, dated 1863; I've found another from the Atlantic Monthly of the
>year after: "We shall soon learn that there is next to nobody who really
>favored this thing in the beginning." NewspaperArchive claims two examples
>(I haven't checked them) from the previous decade. The OED one appears to
>be British; I've found another from a British work, Curiosities of London
>Life, by Charles Manby Smith, dated 1853. The idiom sounds dialectal to
>me, but not strange: I can remember using it myself.
>
>
>--
>Michael Quinion
>Editor, World Wide Words
>E-mail: wordseditor at worldwidewords.org
>Web: http://www.worldwidewords.org
>
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