Narrow

How to spell narrow

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce narrow

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does narrow mean?

1. adjectiveOf small width in relation to length; not wide.
2. verbTo become or make less wide, or to reduce a range of options.

Narrow in a sentence

• adjective

  The cottage stood at the end of a narrow country lane.

• verb

  The committee hopes to narrow the list of candidates to three.

• adjective

  The old town had narrow streets that cars could barely pass through.

• verb

  New spending limits will narrow the gap between the two budgets.

Where does narrow come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a thoroughly native English word, descending from the Old English nearu, which meant 'tight', 'constricted', or 'limited in width', and which could also describe a cramped or anxious state of mind. It belongs to the West Germanic family, with close cousins in the older Low German and Dutch nare, and the underlying sense was always one of something pressing closely or leaving little room. Over the centuries the spelling drifted from nearu through Middle English narewe and narwe before settling on the modern narrow, with the doubled letters of the ending reflecting the way the second syllable came to be written. The word also gave rise to the noun 'narrows', the tight channel of water between two larger bodies, and survives in the old phrase 'the strait and narrow'. For spellers the trap is the unstressed ending: the final syllable sounds like a vague 'oh', which tempts people toward '-o' or '-ow' confusion, when the standard form keeps the full -row.

How the word is built

• narrow (from Old English nearu: tight, constricted); a single native root with no separable prefix or suffix