next to

next to

1. Beside, alongside, by, adjacent or near to.

   Would you mind if I sit next to you?

   Cleanliness is next to godliness.

2. Immediately after, in choice or consideration; aside from.
   • 2006, Steve Cox, Jim Terry, One Fine Stooge: Larry Fine's Frizzy Life in Pictures : an Authorized Biography (Cumberland House Publishing, →ISBN), page 59:

     The living room was the main gathering spot in Fine Manor, and next to that the most used room was the dining room, where, on Sunday nights, Larry and Mabel hosted card games, penny-ante poker nights, and even bingo nights...

   • 2016, Jill Shalvis, The Bachelor's Bed, Harlequin (→ISBN)

     “Next to you, I'm all Lani has,” she confided. “But you knew that already, too, right?” He should have. That message came loud and clear. “She loves flowers, did you know that?” Jennie asked.

3. Compared to, in comparison with.
   • 2002, Michael Hettich, Greatest hits, 1987-2001, Pudding House Publications (→ISBN), page 5:

     This last he explained to me once, though the explanation didn't matter much, not next to the feeling of those low hairy clouds and the sea bashing itself against the shore. The explanation, in fact, made the poem less wonderful, ...

   • 2013 August 10, “A new prescription”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8848:

     As the world's drug habit shows, governments are failing in their quest to monitor every London window-box and Andean hillside for banned plants. But even that Sisyphean task looks easy next to the fight against synthetic drugs.

• next to last

next to

1. Almost; nearly, well-nigh.

   It is next to impossible to get him to admit it, but he writes very well.

   The job paid next to nothing.

   • 1885, Richard Watson Dixon, History of the Church of England: From the Abolition of the Roman Jurisdiction, page 465:

     The Puritans who groaned under it, and so bitterly resisted when it was administered at the hands of bishops, forgot, or never knew, that it was invented, or next to invented, by the episcopal founder of Nonconformity.

• texton