What is the meaning of the phrase ‘coming down the pike’?
Something is going to happen in the future (or soon or over time). (Or change is coming.)
What is the origin of the phrase ‘coming down the pike’?
In the phrase ‘coming down the pike’, the word ‘pike’ is short form for ‘turnpike’. Originally “turnpike” meant a toll booth, but it later came to mean the highway, or toll road itself which links major cities together. So here, the metaphor of something coming down the pike means that something is on its way.
The metaphorical meaning of “coming down the pike” emerged in the early 20th century, in American English. However, the precise origin of the phrase is hard to determine, but we do know that it gained popularity in the early 20th century. For instance, the phrase was commonly used by the 1920s and 1930s.
The phrase garnered much popularity in the year 1904, when the World’s Fair came to St. Louis with the slogan “There’s always something new coming down the Pike”.
It’s an informal phrase that’s still fairly common today, and is used to describe how new opportunities, challenges or developments are on their way. The purpose of the phrase is to communicate anticipation or to encourage preparedness.
Further clarification
There’s a very similar phrase which goes ‘down the pipe’, which people often take to mean the same thing. The origin of “down the pipe” is not as well-documented and may have come into use later. It could be associated with the use of pipes for delivering mail and messages in tall buildings or simply a mispronunciation of “down the pike.”
Since the word ‘pike’ is so rarely used now, many people conflate the expression ‘down the pike’ with ‘down the pipe,’ and the latter version is now commonly used. However, “down the pike” is the original and more widely accepted phrase in this context.
Similarly, the English language also bears the phrase ‘in the pipeline’ which also means that something is on its way through.
