Word.ws English Dictionary

hard by

hard by adverb: nearby; in close proximity.

Adverb

hard by (not comparable)

  1. (dated) nearby; in close proximity.
    • He attendeth here hard by,
      To know your answer, whether you'll admit him.c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
    • So the Comptroller and I thence to a tavern hard by, and there did agree upon drawing up some letters to be sent to all the pursers and Clerks of the Cheques to make up their accounts.1660 February 10 (date written; Gregorian calendar), Samuel Pepys, Mynors Bright, transcriber, “February 1st, 1659–1660”, in Henry B[enjamin] Wheatley, editor, The Diary of Samuel Pepys […], volume...

Preposition

hard by

  1. (dated) Close to; near; in proximity to; next to.
    • He was laid to rest hard by the same church where he was once baptised.
    • In a bar hard by P. P. Layouts, Richard Hnatt sat sipping a Tequila Sour.1964, Philip K. Dick, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

hard by meaning in Malayalam

hard by in Malayalam

beside, close to, right by
അടുത്ത്, സമീപത്ത്, ഏറ്റവും അടുത്ത്, തൊട്ടടുത്ത്, വളരെയടുത്ത്, നാതിദൂര

Examples of hard by in a sentence

  • Moorhens strutted from the neighbouring bushes, and a bevy of Muscovy ducks, a study in black, white and red, waddled from the farmyard hard by to enjoy a refreshing splash.1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 217:
  • “Where did your, er, journey begin?” “Hard by the farm at Hexwood.”1970, Richard Carpenter, Catweazle, Harmondsworth: Puffin Books, page 107:

Questions about hard by

What does hard by mean?
Hard by means nearby; in close proximity.
What is hard by in Malayalam?
Hard by in Malayalam is അടുത്ത്, സമീപത്ത്, ഏറ്റവും അടുത്ത്. See Hard by meaning in Malayalam.
How do you use hard by in a sentence?
Moorhens strutted from the neighbouring bushes, and a bevy of Muscovy ducks, a study in black, white and red, waddled from the farmyard hard by to enjoy a refreshing splash.
What part of speech is hard by?
Hard by can be an adverb or a preposition.

Words near hard by in the dictionary

  1. hard boil
  2. hard bop
  3. hard bread
  4. hard breads
  5. hard Brexit
  6. hard by
  7. hard c
  8. hard candies
  9. hard candy
  10. hard case
  11. hard cases

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hard by (page history and authors); hard by (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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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Cite this entry: “hard by.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hard_by. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.