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Comment by ProxCoques | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me that it wasn't until recently that I realised that in English, the word "next" when applied to recurring days of the week in English does NOT mean the nearest chronological occurrence of that day. It means the one AFTER it.

So, if a friend says to you on Wednesday that they'll meet you "next Friday" that means Friday AFTER the coming one.

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Hmm, I'm not sure it's that simple! This is how I think it goes:

(en-gb) "Next Friday" is not "the next" (which is called "this Friday" if its the same week). If the next Friday occurs in the next week then people will say "this Friday coming" to specify that they don't mean the Friday that's just gone.

"Next Friday" seems to mean "Friday of the next week", so it can either be the next chronological Friday or the next-but-one.

A sentence like "This Friday Jules and me were going to go to the cinema but something came up." could be said of a past situation - if said on Saturday or Sunday.

Similarly "Next Friday Jules and me were going to go to the cinema but something came up." could be said of the following week - so it's the next Friday on Saturday/Sunday but the next-but-one any other day.

There are seemingly geographic differences in the UK as to which "next" is intended IME.

"Friday coming" is always the next Friday chronologically.

There are similar problems with, for example, "last Friday", especially if it was yesterday most people will think you mean "the Friday of last week".

That's exactly why we say oxt:

http://oxtweekend.com/

> This reminds me that it wasn't until recently that I realised that in English, the word "next" when applied to recurring days of the week in English does NOT mean the nearest chronological occurrence of that day. It means the one AFTER it.

Most commonly, IME, “next Wednesday” in the US it means the one in the next calendar week, which can be either the nearest future occurence or the one after that depending on the current day of the week, “this Wednesday” means the one in the current calendar week (future or past), and “this coming Wednesday” means the next chronological occurrence regardless of calendar weeks.

Yup. Or the idiomatic forms "Tuesday next" (not the most imminent Tuesday, the one after that) and "Monday week" (one week after the most imminent Monday).

Frankly I hate them and always request a date for clarification!

My wife speaks differently (to her, "next" is chronologically next; as in less than 7 days hence). She is the only person I've ever known to speak so, though our backgrounds are not very different. We are both too stubborn to adopt the other's usage, thus we've learned to circumlocute to avoid miscommunication.

The same confusion is going on in the German language. Instead of next, 'nächsten' the confusion is tried to be solved using 'diesen' (this), 'kommenden' (upcoming) or 'nächsten' (next) causing its own set of ambiguities.

It's the same in German, "nächster Freitag" means the one after this one.

That's because "next", and "this" refers not to the day but to the week.

It's the same in some latin languages as well and I think it makes sense, you are already naming the day with "Friday" if you are going to give some more information it should be about some other time measurement - in this case, the week - or it would just be superfluous information.

But if it's Thursday, and you say "next Wednesday", you don't mean "in six days", you mean in thirteen.

No, I would mean six days, not 13. Guess it's ambiguous between different people but I always understood it like the GP explained.

How about "let's meet this Wednesday" then?

To me "this Wednesday" has already passed in your example and people don't normally make appointments for the past.

Not really, not in English and not in Spanish or Portuguese.

"Next Wednesday" means "Next week's Wednesday" in all cases. It's not ambiguous.

Huh, interesting. In Greek, we say "(this) Wednesday" (whichever one comes next), and "next Wednesday" (the one that comes after the next one). Weeks don't factor into it at all.

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