narrowing

narrowing is the present participle and gerund of narrow.

Noun

narrowing (countable and uncountable, plural narrowings)

The process of becoming narrow.
- narrowings of the road
- Owing to the war, it was not thought advisable to carry out repairs to this pier, as this would have involved the temporary narrowing of the channel, and it was not until 1919 that it was decided to proceed with the construction of a steel-pile coffer dam round the south pier.1949 November and December, “Notes and News: The High Level Bridge, Newcastle: Strengthening and Repairs”, in Railway Magazine, page 407
The part of a stocking that is narrowed.
- It may be observed, as a general rule, that the length of a stocking, before the narrowings, should be, at the least, equal to twice the width of the top...1858, Margaret Maria Gordon, Household economy, page 60

narrow (third-person singular simple present narrows, present participle narrowing, simple past and past participle narrowed)

(transitive) To reduce in width or extent; to contract.
- We need to narrow the search.
(intransitive) To get narrower.
- The road narrows.
To partially lower one's eyelids in a way usually taken to suggest a defensive, aggressive or penetrating look.
- He stepped in front of me, narrowing his eyes to slits.
To contract the size of, as a stocking, by taking two stitches into one.
(transitive) To convert to a data type that cannot hold as many distinct values.
- to narrow an int variable to a short variable
Antonyms:

widen

narrowing

shrinking
- Such amity is no small thing. The narrowing world of Yiddish theater has been bedeviled with one “broyges” — a cherished term for a falling out — after another2010 March 19, Joseph Berger, “How to Say Theater in Yiddish? Two Ways”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 11 Jun 2019

plural	narrowings

What does narrowing mean?: Narrowing means shrinking.
What is narrowing the present participle and gerund of?: Narrowing is the present participle and gerund of narrow.
What part of speech is narrowing?: Narrowing can be an adjective or a noun.

Adapted from Wiktionary: narrowing (page history and authors); narrow (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “narrowing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/narrowing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.