Word.ws English Dictionary

bright young thing

bright young thing noun: one who is youthful, clever, eager, and high-spirited in manner and attractive in appearance.

Noun (1)

bright young thing (plural bright young things)

  1. (capitalized, idiomatic, sometimes) One who is youthful, clever, eager, and high-spirited in manner and attractive in appearance.
    • Mr. Faggus gave his mare a wink, and she walked demurely after him, a bright young thing, flowing over with life, yet dropping her soul to a higher one, and led by love to anything; as the manner is of females.1869, R. D. Blackmore, chapter 10, in Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor
    • And even as her pure young voice arose above the screams of the departure whistle, she threw a double back-somersault on the quarterdeck, cleverly alighting on the spikes of the wheel before the delighted captain.
      "Jingle my electric bells," be said, looking at the bright young thing, "but you're a...1902, Bret Harte, “Golly and the Christian”, in Condensed Novels Second Series: New Burlesques
  2. (capitalized, historical, often) Any of a group of bohemian young aristocrats and socialites in 1920s London.
    • A set of youngsters from entitled backgrounds sharing a strong desire to buck against convention, the Bright Young Things included the children of some of the oldest and wealthiest families in England (some of whom still appear in gossip magazines today: the Guinnesses, the Mitfords, the Tenants).2016, Eloise Millar, Sam Jordison, Literary London, Michael O'Mara Books, →ISBN

Noun (2) capitalized: Bright Young Thing

Bright Young Thing (plural Bright Young Things)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of bright young thing.

Examples of bright young thing in a sentence

  • YOUNG COLLEGE MAN, travelled, slightly peeved and irked, not disenchanted, would relish hearing from bright young things with gay outlook, brilliant notions.1952 January 14, “The Press: Strictly Personal”, in Time, retrieved 22 Aug 2014:
  • As a bright young thing—which, it could be argued, is what he remained until almost his dying day—Noël Coward wrote letters filled with effusive glee.2007 Dec. 3, Janet Maslin, "Dear Alfred, Gertie and Mummy-snooks: Love, Noelie" (book review of The Letters of Noël Coward ), New York...

Forms of bright young thing

pluralbright young things
alternative formBright Young Thing
pluralBright Young Things

Questions about bright young thing

What does bright young thing mean?
Bright young thing means one who is youthful, clever, eager, and high-spirited in manner and attractive in appearance.
How do you use bright young thing in a sentence?
YOUNG COLLEGE MAN, travelled, slightly peeved and irked, not disenchanted, would relish hearing from bright young things with gay outlook, brilliant notions.
What part of speech is bright young thing?
Bright young thing is a noun.
What is the plural of bright young thing?
The plural of bright young thing is bright young things.

Words near bright young thing in the dictionary

  1. bright sparks
  2. bright spot
  3. bright spots
  4. Bright Week
  5. bright young people
  6. bright young thing
  7. bright young things
  8. Bright's disease
  9. bright-eyed
  10. bright-eyed and bushy-tailed
  11. bright-line rule

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bright young thing (page history and authors); Bright Young Thing (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-bright young thing.ogg.

Cite this entry: “bright young thing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bright_young_thing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.