Word.ws English Dictionary

nigh

/naɪ/

nigh adjective: near, close by.

Adjective

nigh (comparative nigher or more nigh, superlative nighest or most nigh)

  1. (archaic, poetic) Near, close by.
    • The end is nigh!
    • Daybreak is drawing nigh.
    Synonyms:
    close
  2. Not remote in degree, kindred, circumstances, etc.; closely allied; intimate.
    • Ye […] are made nigh by the blood of Christ.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Ephesians 2:13

Verb

nigh (third-person singular simple present nighs, present participle nighing, simple past and past participle nighed)

  1. (ambitransitive) to draw nigh (to); to approach; to come near
    • When the charnel-eyed Pale Horse has nighed1924, Thomas Hardy, He Resolves to Say No More

Adverb

nigh (not comparable)

  1. Almost, nearly.
    • We talked for nigh on to two hours.
    • So, after a spell, he decided to make the best of it and shoved us into the front parlor.[…]It looked like a tomb and smelt pretty nigh as musty and dead-and-gone.1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter XII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC

Preposition

nigh

  1. near; close to
    • When the Moon is horned […] is it not ever nigh the Sun?1661-5, Thomas Salusbury (translator), Galileo Galilei, Dialogue concerning the Two Chief World Systems, 1632
    • The cottage stood nigh the burn, in a little garden, with lilyoaks and grosart bushes lining the pathway.1902, John Buchan, The Outgoing of the Tide

Proper noun capitalized: Nigh

Nigh (plural Nighs)

  1. A surname from Middle English
  2. A surname from German

nigh meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Kannada

nigh in Tamil

அண்டை, நெருங்கு

nigh in Urdu

نزدیک, قریب

nigh in Bengali

কাছাকাছি, নিকটে

nigh in Kannada

ಸಮೀಪದಲ್ಲಿ, ಸಮೀಪವಾಗಿ, ಹತ್ತಿರವಾಗಿ, ಹತ್ತಿರದಲ್ಲಿ
More languagesFewer languages
nigh in Arabic
قَرِيب qarīb, بُالْقُرب مِن bi-l-qurb min
nigh in Persian
نزدیک nazdik, نزدیک شدن nazdik šodan

Examples of nigh in a sentence

  • By these and many histories more, it is most evident, that the more nigh salvation and deliverance approach, the more vehement is temptation and trouble.1831, John Knox, The History of the Reformation of Religion in Scotland, page 421:
  • The enemy, somewhat imboldened, draws nigher to the fort.1834, Davy Crockett, A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett, page 197:
  • The end is nigh (or at least it was supposed to be), but the Pacers in northern England kept plugging away providing a service while awaiting the much-delayed arrival of their replacements.2020 May 20, John Crosse, “Soon to be gone... but never forgotten”, in Rail, page 63, photo caption:
  • Who sends the waves that bring us nigh / Unto the shore, the rock of Christ?2020, Keith Getty, Matt Boswell, Jordan Kauflin, Matt Merker, Matt Papa, “Christ Our Hope in Life and Death”Getty Music Publishing (BMI) /...

All 24 example sentences with nigh

Synonyms of nigh

Forms of nigh

Adjective
comparativenigher
comparativemore nigh
superlativenighest
superlativemost nigh
Verb
third-person singular presentnighs
present participlenighing
past participlenighed
pastnighed
alternative form (obsolete)ny
Proper noun
pluralNighs

Origin of nigh

Inherited from Middle English neygh, from Old English nēah, from Proto-West Germanic *nāhw, from Proto-Germanic *nēhw, from *nēhwaz, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂neḱ- (“to reach”).

* As an English surname, variant of Nye. * As a German surname, probably Americanized from Neu, Ney.

Words formed from nigh

Phrases with nigh

Words that rhyme with nigh

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about nigh

What does nigh mean?
Nigh means near, close by.
What is nigh in Tamil?
Nigh in Tamil is அண்டை, நெருங்கு. See Nigh meaning in Tamil.
How do you use nigh in a sentence?
By these and many histories more, it is most evident, that the more nigh salvation and deliverance approach, the more vehement is temptation and trouble.
What part of speech is nigh?
Nigh can be an adjective, a verb, an adverb or a preposition.
How do you pronounce nigh?
Nigh is pronounced /naɪ/.

Words near nigh in the dictionary

  1. niggun
  2. niggunim
  3. nigguns
  4. nigguz
  5. niggy
  6. nigh
  7. nigh on
  8. nigh-hand
  9. nighabout
  10. nighabouts
  11. nighantu

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nigh (page history and authors); Nigh (page history and authors); nigh (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); nigh (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); nigh (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); nigh (Kannada Wiktionary) (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-nigh.ogg, en-au-nigh.ogg.

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