Upcoming vs up-and-coming

Upcoming versus Up-and-coming?o

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It is easy to confuse the term “upcoming” with “up-and-coming.” And the reasons are obvious.?

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They are almost the same, that is if we consider their orthography (their standard ways of being spelt and written).

Remove the conjunction "and" and the hyphens, then you have the same word.??

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But that is as close as they can get. In speech, the most noticeable difference is the medial conjunction, “and.”?

You can’t pronounce hyphens in an utterance.?

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This is the reason you need to be able to draw a line between the meanings of these two words so that you don’t use them in the wrong contexts.

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Let us first examine the basic roots of the two main components of “upcoming” and “up-and-coming.”?

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"Up" is a preposition, adverb or adjective, depending on your use of it.?

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"Coming" is the progressive form of the verb "come."?

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Semantically, we should be able to switch these two expressions in the same sentence and still have the same meaning.?

But the conjunction-hyphen factor would not allow that.?

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Hence, "upcoming" is an adjective which means: happening or coming soon, imminent, about to happen, or forthcoming.?

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How soon is the event? The event that you use this word for should be relatively within the reach of few weeks, months or a year.?

If the event is farther than one year, you cannot use “upcoming” to show when it is going to happen.

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But you can break the word and switch it around. You’d then have “coming up,” which can be used to describe the time a really close event will happen.

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You’d have seen on your TV screen, “coming up next.” If something is “coming up,” it means they are happening pretty soon (few seconds, minutes, hours, days).

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When you now have it as “coming up” it is no longer an adjective but a verb (phrasal verb).

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Let us see how “upcoming” behaves in few sentences.?

Examples:?

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1.The stadium is all agog for the upcoming match.

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2. Stay tuned for the upcoming programme.

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3. I can't wait for the upcoming movie.?

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"Up-and-coming" is also an adjective, meaning: showing signs of continuous success, improving, becoming popular, fashionable, ambitious, promising, striving, soaring, eager, succeeding etc.

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Examples:?

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1. My sister, Marilyn is an up-and-coming vocalist.

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2.You should be happy for the up-and-coming artists who have taken over our city.

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3. If you work well, you'll join the league of up-and-coming young Facebook writers.

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If someone is achieving prominence and showing strong signs of success, you may refer to them as an up-and-comer.

?“Up-and-coming” is regarded as a characteristic feature of American English which gained usage around the middle of 19th century (1840 – 1850).

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The fact that both expressions “upcoming” and “up-and-coming” are “ing” ending adjectives does not help us much.?

Most people may get confused thinking of them as verbs.?

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However, when you use these two adjectives, the context has to be suitable to any of them that you use so that you don't mean "forthcoming" when your intention is to mean "becoming successful."?

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Got it?

Good!?

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