bright young thing

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Noun

bright young thing (plural bright young things)

  1. (idiomatic, sometimes capitalized) One who is youthful, clever, eager, and high-spirited in manner and attractive in appearance.
    • 1869, R. D. Blackmore, chapter 10, in Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor:
      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.
    • 1902, Bret Harte, “Golly and the Christian”, in Condensed Novels Second Series: New Burlesques:
      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 regular minx—"
    • 1918, Stephen Leacock, “The New Education”, in Frenzied Fiction:
      "So you're going back to college in a fortnight," I said to the Bright Young Thing on the veranda of the summer hotel. "Aren't you sorry?"
      "In a way I am," she said, "but in another sense I'm glad to go back. One can't loaf all the time." . . .
      How full of purpose these modern students are, I thought to myself.
    • 1952 January 14, “The Press: Strictly Personal”, in Time, retrieved 22 August 2014:
      YOUNG COLLEGE MAN, travelled, slightly peeved and irked, not disenchanted, would relish hearing from bright young things with gay outlook, brilliant notions.
    • 1994 March 20, Nigel Cope, “Bunhill: Above the crowd without a net”, in The Independent, UK, retrieved 22 August 2014:
      Charles Wigoder, the 34-year-old chief executive of Peoples Phone, the mobile telephone business, is very much a bright young thing—the kind of businessman who features in magazine articles called '40 under 40', alongside other rising stars who have done unlikely things at unusual ages.
    • 2007 Dec. 3, Janet Maslin, "Dear Alfred, Gertie and Mummy-snooks: Love, Noelie" (book review of The Letters of Noël Coward ), New York Times (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.
    • 2013 August 3, “Revenge of the nerds”, in The Economist‎, volume 408, number 8847:
      Think of banking today and the image is of grey-suited men in towering skyscrapers. Its future, however, is being shaped in converted warehouses and funky offices in San Francisco, New York and London, where bright young things in jeans and T-shirts huddle around laptops, sipping lattes or munching on free food.
  2. (historical, often capitalized) Any of a group of bohemian young aristocrats and socialites in 1920s London.
    • 2016, Eloise Millar, Sam Jordison, Literary London‎, Michael O'Mara Books, →ISBN:
      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).

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