21

Duplicate: What day is next Tuesday?

I have always considered next Friday to be not this coming Friday, but the one after. This Friday is the Friday at the end of this week.

I have a Canadian friend, however, who enforces the more literal meaning of next Friday — the Friday that comes next.

Is there a correct meaning for next Friday, or does this entirely depend on cultural differences?

Community
  • 1
Phil
  • 651
  • 1
    I'd love to know the answer of this too, as there doesn't seem to be any universal meaning for which Friday is "next" friday. I usually find myself just saying either "this coming Friday" vs. "Friday after this coming," or just saying "Friday the 5th" etc. – Ascendant Aug 02 '11 at 03:48
  • 4
    "This Friday" is the Friday that occurs "this week". "Next Friday" is the Friday that occurs "next week". See my answer http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/3841/what-day-is-next-tuesday/3844#3844 – nohat Aug 02 '11 at 06:18
  • I recently found an issue where American English users might refer to "this turn" vs "next turn" with the same ambiguous(to me) rules as "this Friday" vs "next Friday".

    What about saying 'this' Friday On Friday? is this, next and next the one after? or is this today? and next, next week?

     – BaneStar007 Aug 08 '19 at 06:46

3 Answers3

24

People generally understand next Friday as the Friday after this, that is, if you are on a Thursday, and someone tells you to meet him next Friday, it doesn't mean the next day, but rather, Friday week, the Friday after.

Some pedantics will believe and argue that it is, as you say, the Friday that comes next. That is valid reasoning. However, if you want to be understood by the majority, "next Friday" will mean Friday next week.

So, in order to mean the Friday that actually comes next, you would say this Friday, but next Friday is generally understood by more people to mean the Friday after this.

Thursagen
  • 41,919
  • 3
    I had a small discussion about this before posting the question, and we came across a similar example. What if instead of using Thursday in your example, you used Monday or Tuesday? Would this change the meaning of next Friday? – Phil Aug 02 '11 at 03:57
  • 1
    Nope. People will still understand it as the Friday after. This is because of the term this Friday, which refers to the Friday coming right next. – Thursagen Aug 02 '11 at 03:59
  • 3
    What is the meaning of next Friday or this Friday if today is Friday? – Cano64 Oct 21 '15 at 19:44
  • 1
    On friday, "next friday" refers to 7 days later. On Friday, "this Friday" would not be used. (one might say today, last friday, or next friday). – Frank Schwieterman Mar 01 '21 at 17:20
  • 2
    If you say next month, you refer to the "very next" month (the equivalent of "this Friday"), whereas if you say "this month", you refer to the current month in progress (which has no equivalent for a day of the week of course where you would say "today Friday"). So there's a discrepancy depending on the unit level. Similarly, if you miss the bus, you say "I'll take the next one" to mean the immediately upcoming one, not the one after. Losing at a game, you say "better luck next time". Seems very inconsistent. Plus, in French, "next Friday" always means upcoming Friday, adding to the confusion – rempsyc Jun 24 '21 at 17:39
4

If on Saturday or Sunday I needed to identify the day 5/6 days hence, I might explicitly add coming to this Friday to clarify what I meant. From then on it's just this Friday - until Thursday, when it's tomorrow.

By the same token, if I were talking about the Friday seven days after that, I'd call it Friday week on the above Saturday and Sunday, reverting to "next Friday* afterwards. Except that by Wednesday or Thursday I might revert to calling the later one Friday week, if I was talking to a Canadian..

FumbleFingers
  • 140,184
  • 45
  • 294
  • 517
3

Since "this Friday" always indicates "the immediate Friday coming up, no more than 6 days from now.", you'd think that we could always say that "next Friday" is the Friday after the coming-up Friday. That would make sense and would be quite logical.

However, it's just not the case in common speech. "Next Friday" can mean the upcoming Friday or the one after that; If it's important, ask for clarification!

Jeremy
  • 7,368
  • 2
    In my own Canadian English, however, "this Friday" refers to the prior weekend whenever the corresponding verb is in the past tense. e.g., This weekend I went to the mall[; next weekend I'm going to see my parents.] This true even if you drop off the stuff in brackets. – Merk Oct 05 '12 at 06:21