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narrow

adjective · verb · noun

Simple meaning

Having a small width.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

nehroh

Say the bold part a little louder.

US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈnɛɹoʊ

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

adjective

  1. Having a small width; not wide; having opposite edges or sides that are close, especially by comparison to length or depth.

  2. Of little extent; very limited; circumscribed.

  3. Having a small margin or degree.

  4. figuratively

    Restrictive; without flexibility or latitude.

  5. Scrutinizing in detail; close; accurate; exact.

  6. Contracted; of limited scope; bigoted

verb

  1. transitive

    To reduce in width or extent; to contract.

  2. of a person or eyes

    To partially lower one's eyelids in a way usually taken to suggest a defensive, aggressive or penetrating look.

  3. intransitive

    To get narrower.

noun

  1. chiefly in the plural

    A narrow passage, especially a contracted part of a stream, lake, or sea; a strait connecting two bodies of water.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
A2 · Elementary (estimated)
Frequency
Common
Typical Use
Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Having a small width; not wide; having opposite edges or sides that are close, especially by comparison to length or depth.

Used this way, narrow is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It stays understated rather than dramatic. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Mild
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
No strong connotation
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

narrow rangenarrow stripnarrow sensenarrow pathnarrow streetsnarrow bandrelatively narrowrather narrow

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Similar Words, What’s the Difference?

Close in meaning, but not always interchangeable.

  • petty

    Having little or no importance.

  • little

    Small in size.

  • thin

    Having little thickness or extent from one surface to its opposite.

Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

  • narrowingnounInflected form

    An instance of becoming narrow.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

  • narrowlyadverbDerived adverb

    In a narrow manner.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • narrow downverbCompound term

    Define clearly.

  • narrow escapenounCompound term

    Something achieved (or escaped) by a narrow margin.

  • narrow gaugenounCompound term

    A railroad track (or its width) narrower than the standard 56.5 inches.

  • narrow goldenrodnounCompound term

    Western American goldenrod with long narrow clusters of small yellow flowers.

  • narrow-leaf cattailnounCompound term

    Reed maces of America, Europe, North Africa, Asia.

  • narrow-leaf penstemonnounCompound term

    Plant having small narrow leaves and blue-violet flowers in long open clusters.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: having a small width

thin

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.