Word.ws English Dictionary

last big thing

last big thing noun: a recent fad or trend that has lost its popularity.

Noun (1)

last big thing (plural last big things)

  1. A recent fad or trend that has lost its popularity.
    • My nightstand, desktop, TiVo menu and mental to-do list are still full of last big things I never got around to— The Hulk, Friendster, hot yoga (or, for that matter, cold yoga)— and I'm paid to keep up with this stuff.2003, Time - Volume 162, page v
    • My colleagues and I are searching for the next big thing in the field. The last big thing came about 15 years ago and we're currently in a “been there, done that” mode.2005, Eric Dolin, The Ph. D Survival Guide, →ISBN, page 19
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see last, big, thing.

Noun (2) capitalized: Last Big Thing

Last Big Thing (plural Last Big Things)

  1. (alternative) Alternative form of last big thing.
    • Now, nobody knows what IT is exactly, but as dot-com companies, purveyors of the Last Big Thing, bite the dust, we're ready to grasp at anything — even if we don't know what it is.2001 April, John R. Quain, “What Is IT?”, in Popular Science, volume 258, number 4, page 74
    • You might call Web services the Last Big Thing. The surprise is that today, in the midst of an IT downturn that has become a way of life, Web services really is changing everything.2003 September 15, Eric Knorr, “A Bargain So Far”, in CIO, volume 16, number 23, page 118

Examples of last big thing in a sentence

  • We always, it seems, are provided with a glut of material on the next big thing and not enough on how to make the last big thing actually work.2009, Alec Sharp, Patrick McDermott, Workflow Modeling: Tools for Process Improvement and Applications Development, →ISBN, page 4:
  • They were usually still responding to the last big thing.2011, Stephen Fried, Thing of Beauty, →ISBN, page 102:

Forms of last big thing

plurallast big things
alternative formLast Big Thing
pluralLast Big Things

Origin of last big thing

Back-formation from next big thing.

Questions about last big thing

What does last big thing mean?
Last big thing means a recent fad or trend that has lost its popularity.
How do you use last big thing in a sentence?
We always, it seems, are provided with a glut of material on the next big thing and not enough on how to make the last big thing actually work.
What part of speech is last big thing?
Last big thing is a noun.
What is the plural of last big thing?
The plural of last big thing is last big things.

Words near last big thing in the dictionary

  1. lassy
  2. last
  3. last 16
  4. last 16s
  5. last antecedent rule
  6. last big thing
  7. last big things
  8. last burst of fire
  9. last bursts of fire
  10. last but not least
  11. last but one

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: last big thing (page history and authors); Last Big 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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