narrow
Americanadjective
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narrower,
comparative
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narrowest
superlative
-
of little breadth or width; not broad or wide; not as wide as usual or expected.
a narrow path.
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limited in extent or space; affording little room.
narrow quarters.
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limited in range or scope.
a narrow sampling of public opinion.
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lacking breadth of view or sympathy, as persons, the mind, or ideas.
a narrow man, knowing only his professional specialty;
a narrow mind.
- Synonyms:
- small-minded, shallow, limited, biased
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with little margin to spare; barely adequate or successful; close.
a narrow escape.
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careful, thorough, or minute, as a scrutiny, search, or inquiry.
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limited in amount; small; meager.
narrow resources.
-
characterized by limited means; straitened; impoverished.
Since work was scarce, he soon found himself in narrow circumstances.
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New England. stingy or parsimonious.
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Phonetics.
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(of a vowel) articulated with the tongue laterally constricted, as the ee of beet, the oo of boot, etc.; tense.
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(of a phonetic transcription) utilizing a unique symbol for each phoneme and whatever supplementary diacritics are needed to indicate its subphonemic varieties.
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(of livestock feeds) proportionately rich in protein.
verb (used without object)
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narrows,
present (3rd person singular)
-
narrowed,
past participle, past
-
narrowing
present participle
verb (used with object)
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narrows,
present (3rd person singular)
-
narrowed,
past participle, past
-
narrowing
present participle
-
to make narrower.
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to limit or restrict (often followed bydown ): to narrow down a contest to three competitors.
to narrow an area of search;
to narrow down a contest to three competitors.
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to make narrow-minded.
Living in that village has narrowed him.
noun
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a narrow part, place, or thing.
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a narrow part of a valley, passage, or road.
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(used with a singular or plural verb) narrows, a narrow part of a strait, river, ocean current, etc.
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the Narrows, a narrow strait from upper to lower New York Bay, between Staten Island and Long Island. 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) long; 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) wide.
adjective
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small in breadth, esp in comparison to length
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limited in range or extent
-
limited in outlook; lacking breadth of vision
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limited in means or resources; meagre
narrow resources
-
barely adequate or successful (esp in the phrase a narrow escape )
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painstakingly thorough; minute
a narrow scrutiny
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finance denoting an assessment of liquidity as including notes and coin in circulation with the public, banks' till money, and banks' balances Compare broad
narrow money
-
dialect overcareful with money; parsimonious
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phonetics
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(of agricultural feeds) especially rich in protein
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informal an escape only just managed
verb
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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narrownessnoun
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overnarrownessnoun
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overnarrowadjective
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unnarrowadjective
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unnarrowedadjective
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narrowlyadverb
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overnarrowlyadverb
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unnarrowlyadverb
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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narrowsimple
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narrowssimple
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have narrowedperfect
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has narrowedperfect
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am narrowingprogressive
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are narrowingprogressive
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is narrowingprogressive
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have been narrowingperfect progressive
-
has been narrowingperfect progressive
Past
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narrowedsimple
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had narrowedperfect
-
was narrowingprogressive
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were narrowingprogressive
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had been narrowingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of narrow
First recorded before 900; Middle English narw(e), nareu(e), narow(e), Old English nearu (inflectional stem nearw- ), cognate with Old Saxon naru “narrow,” Dutch naar “dismal, unpleasant,” Old Saxon naro, naru “narrow, depressing”; possibly akin to German Narbe “scar,” literally, “narrow mark”
Explanation
Narrow means less wide or to make less wide. When you narrow down your choices, you decrease the number of choices. A road might be too narrow for a car. When used to describe something physical such as a street or hips, narrow simply means not wide. Similarly, with quantities it means not much like when you win your basketball game by a narrow margin. But if you use it to describe an attitude, it has the negative meaning of not wide or open enough. If you're narrow-minded, you don't see the big picture –– sometimes it means you think in narrow stereotypes.
Vocabulary lists containing narrow
Unit 3: Compelling Evidence
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Beowulf vocabulary
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"Your World," Vocabulary from the poem
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Its towering, mostly unbroken face and narrow swimming pool suggested a rampart and a moat, but behind the concrete exterior, Caland eliminated every door save the guest bathroom.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 21, 2026
Damien Corvin believes the gap between starting out in Northern Ireland and building a career is beginning to narrow.
From BBC ● Sep. 19, 2026
They quickly swept into the Red Sea port city of Mokha and took Perim Island in the Bab al-Mandeb, the narrow southern mouth of the Red Sea.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 19, 2026
Researchers are now trying to narrow down the possibilities by studying subtle characteristics of the moon, including its gravity and motion.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 19, 2026
She handed me four narrow strips of neon-green craft paper.
From "Bye Forever, I Guess" by Jodi Meadows
Penguins with narrower diets, including Emperors and Adélies, are decreasing in number in some regions.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 22, 2026
These include the narrower range of activities and restaurant choices, leaving behind friends and family, and for Brianna the difficulty of settling her children into new schools.
From BBC ● Sep. 14, 2026
During the Covid pandemic, Congress approved payouts to income-eligible tax filers and their dependents only, a narrower approach that would lower the cost further.
From Barron's ● Sep. 10, 2026
A narrower 240 million subset of only U.S. citizens would bring the cost to $1.2 trillion.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 10, 2026
He eased through the same front doors he’d entered the night before, but instead of following the corridor that led to the worship hall, he took a narrower side stairway up to the dormitories.
From "Beasts of Prey" by Ayana Gray
The euro was steady against the dollar and Deutsche Bank said it could continue to trade between $1.13 and $1.20 during the rest of this year, marking the narrowest range on record.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 21, 2026
It’s important to appreciate that the students pressed for the narrowest, most modest ruling possible.
From Slate ● Jun. 30, 2026
"It tends to be in the narrowest area of the channel between Deganwy and the beacons."
From BBC ● Jun. 12, 2026
Its narrowest point is less than two miles wide, yet it must now accommodate roughly 440 ships a day—60% more than before the war.
From Barron's ● May 22, 2026
There was a little sign above the door that said the poet Edna Saint Vincent Millay once lived in the house, and that it was the narrowest house in New York.
From "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer
The renter advantage also narrows significantly the longer a person waits to start investing — the sooner the better.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 2, 2026
However, the gap narrows at Advanced Higher level with a 1.2 percentage point difference between those with and without ASN.
From BBC ● Aug. 4, 2026
Plaque narrows blood vessels and makes them less flexible, increasing the strain on the cardiovascular system.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 1, 2026
Companies are seeking lower-cost open-source AI models as their quality gap with closed-source models narrows.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 18, 2026
She looks up at me and narrows her eyes.
From "How to Disappear Completely" by Ali Standish
They eventually narrowed the sample to ten high-quality events for which they could reliably determine both the black hole's feeding rate and the timing of its radio outflows.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 21, 2026
The gender gap also narrowed considerably when looking at political preferences among college-educated Latino men and women.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 17, 2026
The spread narrowed over the summer as a ceasefire and a short-lived diplomatic deal between the U.S. and Iran raised hopes that the worst of the conflict might be over.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 14, 2026
Signet reaffirmed its sales projection for the year to $6.7 billion to $6.9 billion, and narrowed its same-store sales outlook to flat to up 2.5%, from down by almost 1% to up 2.5%.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 9, 2026
Her world consisted of this cubicle and the corridor outside—and soon I began to see the wisdom of this narrowed vision, and why prisoners instinctively shied away from questions about their larger lives.
From "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom
This can lead to more serious health issues including scarring and narrowing of the esophagus, or even tearing in the esophagus.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 18, 2026
Meanwhile, Google Gemini is gaining share on ChatGPT for AI services, Mahaney said, with the gap between the two narrowing to 3 percentage points among survey respondents.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 17, 2026
Moonshot's Kimi K3, released this summer, is seen by analysts as the clearest sign yet of that narrowing gap.
From Barron's ● Sep. 17, 2026
There is the tunnel vision, that narrowing of the entire clamoring world down to 100 yards of grass and a single question of whether the men in my colors will get there.
From Salon ● Sep. 9, 2026
There was a long silence as Arwyl looked at me, his eyes narrowing slightly behind his spectacles, as if he were trying to see something inside me.
From "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss
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.
