"Next" has terrible ambiguity, beyond the phrase "next week." If it's Monday and someone says "next Thursday" do they mean the coming Thursday (+3) or the one after that (+10)? I assume the latter, except when it's said by people who I know disagree!

But even with people I don't put in that category, I'd hesitate to assume +13 days if they said "next Sunday" on Monday. More likely they mean +6 when it's so far out...

Tell me about it. My wife and I cannot agree on the meaning of "next" for almost anything, and we are Spanish speakers.

For example, when driving, to her "turn at the next corner" means "the corner after the next", while to me it means "the corner the car is about to cross". What I call "the next corner" to her is "this corner".

Same with days, of course.

It drives me crazy!

I don’t know if it would translate, but I’ve had good outcomes navigating with my brother by saying “following” instead of “next”. As in “okay we’re coming to Delaware street and we’ll take a left at the following intersection”. It’s not even language my brother uses but he immediately understood “next next not this next” and so I stuck with it.

Oh wow. The only context in which I (and people around me) use "next" like that is with days, which is confusing in its own right, but at least it's contained.

“Next Thursday” vs “next week Thursday”. The former, for me, means +3 and the latter +10. I don’t think there’s ever been a time when someone I know has said the former but implied +10.

Interesting to see so many people here who do interpret it that way.

In my area it's fairly common to say, for example, "X happens every Thursday. Do you want to go this Thursday or next Thursday?" which is equivalent to +3 versus +10.

Same with my wife; she tells apart "this Thursday" and "next Thursday" in exactly the way you describe. I don't. Predictably, all sorts of confusions ensue.

That kind of ambiguity is everywhere, though. If it's Friday, and I say "next Monday", those two days are close enough that you may need clarification - do I mean "this coming Monday" or "the Monday after that". Or another example for day 1 = Monday, if on Sunday I said "let's do that next week", you may need the same form of clarification.

I don’t see any ambiguity in “next Monday”. It literally is saying the next day which is Monday.

“Next week” on a Sunday is ambiguous because some people consider the new week to have started while others consider it to start the next day.

Human speech doesn't often work on just the literal meanings of words though, hence the ambiguity. Very very rarely at 10PM on a Sunday night does anyone mean "tomorrow" when they say "See you at the club next Monday". They usually don't mean that because we have the word "tomorrow" and that's more precise.

Likewise, on a Friday afternoon most people (in my experience) don't say "Hey we're having a cook out next Sunday, want to come?" and mean the Sunday in exactly two days. Again, because the phrase "this Sunday" is available and more precise.

In fact, I think in my experience "next X" almost always implies a full 7 days between now and the X. If my boss on Monday says "we need this in production next Friday" I don't normally take that to mean "we need this in production in the next 4 days.

There's a real ambiguity, but it isn't in the examples you gave.

It's the case of saying "next Tuesday" on a Thursday, and meaning that no Tuesdays will pass before the date in question, versus saying "next Thursday" on a Tuesday, where a Thursday will happen before the date.

That's because on Thursday, "this Tuesday" has already happened. But sometimes people will be thinking of "Tuesday after next" when they say "next Tuesday" on a Thursday, because they mean "the Tuesday after the coming Tuesday" and not "the Tuesday of next week".

Both cases are still ambiguous because even though “this” Tuesday has already passed on Thursday, no one gets confused when you say “I’m having a cook out this Tuesday, want to come?” because the future tense of the sentence automatically excludes the Tuesday in the current week which has already passed.

Since “next Tuesday” also puts the sentence context into the future, the ambiguity exists around whether it means “Tuesday in 5 days” or “Tuesday in 12 days”

If no such ambiguity existed, we wouldn’t need common phrases like “this coming Tuesday” which clarifies the speaker is talking about the “next Tuesday with no other Tuesday’s in between”

Amusingly I don’t think there’s much ambiguity around “the Tuesday after next” as a phrase even though it should be equally ambiguous, but I’ve never heard that phrase to mean “3 Tuesdays from now”

> I don’t see any ambiguity in “next Monday”. It literally is saying the next day which is Monday.

But when communicating with other people, it matters what they understand. And I've come across enough people who don't use "next Monday" like that to understand the word "next" means trouble.

Almost universally meant to mean in the next 6 days. Next week implies after 7 days.

This isn't almost universal, in fact it's generally understood not to be the case, some of the time.

If I say "next Wednesday" on Thursday, I mean the Wednesday of next week, not "this Wednesday" which was yesterday.

"Next Weekday" of a weekday that's yet to happen, means one week after that day within this week.

"Next Weekday" of a weekday that already happened, means the very next instance of that day in the calendar, "This Weekday" refers to the past.

"Hey, this Tuesday was your presentation right? How did it go?"

"We rescheduled for next Monday actually". <- this is obviously the Monday after the coming weekend.

You're right. I intuitively know and follow what you're saying, but I didn't put it into words correctly.

Slightly confused - don’t your two sentences contradict each other?

Edit: also on a Friday, you can say next week and mean Monday (3 days later)

Sorry I read your post incorrectly. If I say, let's do something this week, it means up to and including Sunday. If I say next week, it means after the upcoming Sunday.

That makes sense for places where the week starts with Monday, but I guess this week means up to and including Saturday for Americans if it's actually normal that the week starts with Sunday.

I was always under the impression that Americans basically agreed on that the week started on Monday, that the weekend ended with Sunday and that next week meant after Sunday. I thought Sunday as the first day in American calendars was a "yeah, it's stupid we do it like that, but I guess that is how it used to be back in the days" kind of thing.

I disagree with the sibling poster. Your first paragraph is correct.

The week starts on Sunday. The weekend ends on Sunday. It only makes sense if you consider two adjoining endpoints of previous weeks to be one "weekend", which I've never known anyone not to do without thinking about it.

Someone talking at work might mean something different, but I don't usually hear "next week" to mean Monday-Sunday in general conversation and we'd probably clarify for Sunday anyway.

If someone says "The week of the 15th" and Sunday is the 15th, they mean the seven days from 15-21 not the seven days of 9-15.

"Next week, maybe Sunday" means the next calendar Sunday as in Sunday-Saturday, not the Sunday after that as in Monday-Sunday.

Anyone who says otherwise is selling calendars with a Monday start of the week. :)

Your 2nd paragraph is correct. No one actually thinks about when the week starts, it's almost universally understood to be Monday based even if the calendar says Sunday based.

The answer is the same on Saturday as on Sunday, so that doesn't really matter.