next door

• next-door, nextdoor

next door (not comparable)

1. In an adjacent building, room or place.

   He lives next door but one (= two houses from mine).

   • 1895 October, Stephen Crane, chapter X, in The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War, New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC, page 102:

     "Yeh know Tom Jamison, he lives next door t' me up home.

next door (comparative more next door, superlative most next door)

1. (usually postpositive) That is in an adjacent place; that is located next door.

   Try the place next door.

• When used prepositively, before the noun it modifies, some educators recommend the hyphenated form next-door.

• boy next door
• girl next door

next door

1. (dialectal) Next door to.
   • 1932, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song (A Scots Quair), Polygon, published 2006, page 17:

     Next door the kirk was an olden tower, built in the time of the Roman Catholics [...].