Word.ws English Dictionary

next week, East Lynne

next week, East Lynne phrase: suggests that something will fail and soon be ended.

Phrase

next week, East Lynne

  1. (dated) Suggests that something will fail and soon be ended.
    • The moving picture machine, which gave an amusing exhibition between the third and fourth acts, was, however, moved too rapidly, and as a result some of the pictures were blurred. Next week, 'East Lynne.'1906, The Independent
    • PETER: We could start a two-person stock company. If things get tough, we can play some small town auditoriums. We'll call this one "The Great Deception."
      ELLIE: Next week "East Lynne."1934, Robert Riskin, It Happened One Night
  2. (dated) Suggests that a person's acting is poor and particularly melodramatic.
    • Mr. Derwent liked his actors to be theatrical (and they liked him because he would let them be theatrical) . He saw no wrong in their overplaying the soft and sentimental elements in their parts even though we pointed out how detrimental this was to the play.[…]Our only recourse was to wander...1944, Theatre World
    • “It was perfectly appropriate for the Senator from Idaho to offer this amendment, which I [am] so happy to accept,” O’Mahoney assured him with a straight face. Ardent Johnson supporter that he was, Oregon Senator Richard Neuberger could barely contain himself. In a reference to a hokey stage...1957, Richard Neuberger, quotee, “LBJ Goes for Broke”, in Smithsonian Magazine

Origin of next week, East Lynne

East Lynne was a popular 1861 novel by Mrs. Henry Wood with numerous stage adaptations. Urban legend stated that if a stage show was failing, the theatre manager would cancel it by declaring "Next week, East Lynne!" as it was a guaranteed moneymaker and part of the standard repertoire.

Questions about next week, East Lynne

What does next week, East Lynne mean?
Next week, East Lynne means suggests that something will fail and soon be ended.
What part of speech is next week, East Lynne?
Next week, East Lynne is a phrase.

Words near next week, East Lynne in the dictionary

  1. next to last
  2. next to no time
  3. next to nothing
  4. next tomorrow
  5. next up
  6. next week, East Lynne
  7. next world
  8. next-day
  9. next-door
  10. next-gen
  11. next-generation

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: next week, East Lynne (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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Cite this entry: “next week, East Lynne.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/next_week%2C_east_lynne. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.