Word.ws English Dictionary

close on the heels of

close on the heels of adjective: near in time or place; very close.

Adjective

close on the heels of (not comparable)

  1. (idiomatic) Near in time or place; very close.
    • So back they ran to the Abbey, dodged the Baronet, armed themselves, and got the old pointer Mark'em (named after his profession and the keeper at a blow) close to their heels, and, by skirting outhouses and slinking under walls, escaped to the security that favors the commencement of adventures of...1859, George Meredith, chapter 5, in The Ordeal of Richard Feverel. A History of Father and Son. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC

Questions about close on the heels of

What does close on the heels of mean?
Close on the heels of means near in time or place; very close.
What part of speech is close on the heels of?
Close on the heels of is an adjective.

Words near close on the heels of in the dictionary

  1. close in on
  2. close in upon
  3. close of business
  4. close of play
  5. close off
  6. close on the heels of
  7. close one
  8. close one eye
  9. close one's doors
  10. close one's ears
  11. close one's eyes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: close on the heels of (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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