Meaning
A person, event, or sensation that attracts intense public excitement for a very short time and is then forgotten. The phrase now sounds dated or literary and survives mostly in historical or consciously old-fashioned writing, often in the modernised form 'nine-day wonder'. Literary and faintly archaic; more likely in essays and history writing than in casual speech. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The idea that a marvel holds attention for exactly nine days was proverbial in English centuries before any modern-looking citation. The Phrase Finder traces the earliest known instance to the Harley Lyrics (circa 1325), and a clear Middle English statement appears in poems written by Charles, Duke of Orleans, during his captivity after Agincourt (1465): 'For this a wondir last but dayes nyne, An oold proverbe is seid.' Etymonline likewise calls nine days proverbial since the mid-14th century and dates the settled expression 'nine days' wonder' to the 1590s; George Herbert's The Temple (1633) supplies an early print record of the form used now. A popular false lead is William Kemp's pamphlet Kemps nine daies vvonder (1600), an account of his nine-day morris dance from London to Norwich: the Phrase Finder states plainly that the phrase predates Kemp, so the dance is a famous exploitation of the proverb, not its source.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a nine-day wonder
Usage Examples
- The doughnut-scented perfume was a nine days' wonder; nobody mentions it now.
- Historians still argue whether the 1962 flying-saucer report was a hoax or merely a nine days' wonder.
- Each season some gadget becomes a nine days' wonder at the trade fair, then vanishes before it reaches the shops.