Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Rubens leads our eye along diagonal lines from the ground to the sky, from the close-at-hand to the faraway, incrementally.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 1, 2026
Drawing grand lessons from especially vivid and close-at-hand examples is always tempting.
From The New Yorker ● Nov. 24, 2014
We’re better at dealing with problems that are concrete, close-at-hand, familiar and require skills and tools that we already possess.
From Time ● Jul. 15, 2013
The numerous species of traps use ingenious methods to cover the insects imprisoned in the blossom with the sticky pollen that they carry to the flower's close-at-hand female sex organ as they try to escape.
From Time Magazine Archive
I was not in the least cast down at this long-range estimate, since I had become quite used to close-at-hand ridicule.
From The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure by Dewey, Edward Hooker
First, don’t trade too much; second, only buy losers when you are confident that a market bottom is close at hand and a big recovery will follow.
From Barron's ● Mar. 26, 2026
The dawning of reality should be close at hand now for England players - 'maybe it's not you, Scotland, maybe it's us'.
From BBC ● Feb. 14, 2026
In a corner of their ramshackle tent in southern Gaza, Ghaidaa Qudaih and her family keep a baby stroller and three backpacks filled with clothes, diapers, milk and other necessities close at hand.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 18, 2025
The images tell a simple story: that chaos hovers close at hand, and that order, however fragile, depends on him.
From Slate ● Aug. 25, 2025
"Is this one of the direwolves I've heard so much of?" a familiar voice asked close at hand.
From "A Game of Thrones" by George R.R. Martin
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.
