next to

Definitions

1. 1

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

   • Would you mind if I sit next to you?
   • Cleanliness is next to godliness.
2. 2

   Immediately after, in choice or consideration

   Immediately after, in choice or consideration; aside from.

   • 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...
   • “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. 3

   Compared to, in comparison with.

   • 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, ...
   • 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.
4. ›+ 1 more definitionshow fewer

   1. 4

      Almost

      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.
      • 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.

The neighborhood