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narrow
[ nar-oh ]
adjective
- of little breadth or width; not broad or wide; not as wide as usual or expected:
a narrow path.
- limited in extent or space; affording little room:
narrow quarters.
- limited in range or scope:
a narrow sampling of public opinion.
- lacking breadth of view or sympathy, as persons, the mind, or ideas:
a narrow man, knowing only his professional specialty;
a narrow mind.
Synonyms: small-minded, shallow, limited, biased
- with little margin to spare; barely adequate or successful; close:
a narrow escape.
- careful, thorough, or minute, as a scrutiny, search, or inquiry.
narrow resources.
- characterized by limited means; straitened; impoverished:
Since work was scarce, he soon found himself in narrow circumstances.
- New England. stingy or parsimonious.
- Phonetics.
- (of a vowel) articulated with the tongue laterally constricted, as the ee of beet, the oo of boot, etc.; tense. Compare lax 1( def 7 ).
- (of a phonetic transcription) utilizing a unique symbol for each phoneme and whatever supplementary diacritics are needed to indicate its subphonemic varieties. Compare broad ( def 14 ).
- (of livestock feeds) proportionately rich in protein.
verb (used without object)
- to decrease in width or breadth:
This is where the road narrows.
verb (used with object)
- to make narrower.
- to limit or restrict (often followed by down ): to narrow down a contest to three competitors.
to narrow an area of search;
to narrow down a contest to three competitors.
- to make narrow-minded:
Living in that village has narrowed him.
noun
- a narrow part, place, or thing.
- a narrow part of a valley, passage, or road.
- narrows, (used with a singular or plural verb) a narrow part of a strait, river, ocean current, etc.
- the Narrows, a narrow strait from upper to lower New York Bay, between Staten Island and Long Island. 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) long; 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) wide.
narrow
/ ˈnærəʊ /
adjective
- small in breadth, esp in comparison to length
- limited in range or extent
- limited in outlook; lacking breadth of vision
- limited in means or resources; meagre
narrow resources
- barely adequate or successful (esp in the phrase a narrow escape )
- painstakingly thorough; minute
a narrow scrutiny
- See broadfinance denoting an assessment of liquidity as including notes and coin in circulation with the public, banks' till money, and banks' balances Compare broad
narrow money
- dialect.overcareful with money; parsimonious
- phonetics
- (of agricultural feeds) especially rich in protein
- narrow squeak informal.narrow squeak an escape only just managed
verb
- to make or become narrow; limit; restrict
noun
- a narrow place, esp a pass or strait
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Derived Forms
- ˈnarrowness, noun
- ˈnarrowly, adverb
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Other Words From
- nar·row·ly adverb
- nar·row·ness noun
- o·ver·nar·row adjective
- o·ver·nar·row·ly adverb
- o·ver·nar·row·ness noun
- un·nar·row adjective
- un·nar·row·ly adverb
- un·nar·rowed adjective
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Word History and Origins
Origin of narrow1
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Word History and Origins
Origin of narrow1
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Idioms and Phrases
In addition to the idiom beginning with narrow , see straight and narrow .Discover More
Example Sentences
Even those who were in the Capitol that day had only a narrow sense of what happened.
Google previously added a menu at the top to let you filter based on those alternate meanings and better narrow down the search results to what you are looking for.
As we noted earlier, the research subjects — college students and MTurk users — they represent narrow slices of the population.
Her terror is played out for entertainment, whether that means a narrow escape or a bloody death.
I think that on both sides of the aisle, you see these entrenched politicians, this entrenched political class who have a very narrow viewpoint of how the world should act.
What it endangers is a narrow conception of Russian power, understood through the eyes of its dictatorial leader.
By that time, SantaCon had already spread beyond the narrow confines of a few prankster-explorers.
A cruiser shows up and eyes narrow and citizens often withdraw.
And besides, the studies that do enjoy widespread media circulation focus on a very narrow segment of the LGBT community: gay men.
He has sunken eyes and a narrow black beard speckled with gray.
The streets here are rather wide for an Italian city but would be deemed intolerably narrow in America.
He is rather tall and narrow, and wears a long abb's coat reaching nearly down to his feet.
As he was toiling slowly up a narrow, rocky pass, he suddenly saw an Indian's head peering over the ledge.
Her thin and narrow hands held the balcony railing rather tightly.
When we got to the house we entered an obscure corridor and began to find our way up a dark and narrow staircase.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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