Get an element that might be a children from next element

Question

Suppose that I want to select the nearest target element from startFromThis (only the element that come after startFromThis. the target might be a child of any unnamed or unclassed element. Is there anyway to select this.

Sorry, i would like to edit startFromThis to be an ID

<div id="startFromThis"><div>
<div>
  <span class="target"></span>
<div>

Answer 1

You can use the .closest() function for this:

$(document).ready(function(){
    $('.startFromThis').closest('.target').html('Selected!');
});

Check out the documentation here: http://api.jquery.com/closest/

Answer 2

$('#startFromThis').closest('target element') assuming startFromThis is an id.

Answer 3

$(".startFromThis").closest().children(".target");