nine days' wonder

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Related to nine days' wonder: choir stall, sailing under false colors

nine days' wonder

A thing or event that creates a brief state of public interest or excitement.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

nine′ days'` won′der

someone or something that arouses short-lived interest.

[1585–95]

nine days' wonder

- An old term (c. 1325) for an event or phenomenon that attracts enthusiastic interest for a short while, but is then ignored or forgotten.

nine days' wonder

Something or someone that achieves great fame but only for a short while.

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References in classic literature ?

When Roderick Elliston regained entire sensibility, it was to find his misfortune the town talk--the more than nine days' wonder and horror--while, at his bosom, he felt the sickening motion of a thing alive, and the gnawing of that restless fang which seemed to gratify at once a physical appetite and a fiendish spite.

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Both were now of the same mind, and there could be but the one ending; and it was the mild nine days' wonder of Genevieve's neighborhood when she and Joe walked out together.

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The smiles of the great world would not keep hunger from the door; he feared that his fame might be only a nine days' wonder, so he decided to return to his farming.