Narrowly

How to spell narrowly

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce narrowly

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does narrowly mean?

1. adverbBy only a small margin; barely.
2. adverbIn a close, careful or restricted way.

Narrowly in a sentence

• The cyclist narrowly avoided the oncoming car.

• The inspector narrowly examined every line of the contract.

• She narrowly missed the last train home.

• The rules were drawn so narrowly that few projects qualified.

Where does narrowly come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word grows from the Old English adjective nearu, which meant 'tight', 'constricted' or 'of little breadth', the same root that gives us the modern adjective 'narrow'. That core sense of physical tightness was later stretched, quite naturally, into the figurative idea of something happening by only a small margin, as when an escape is 'narrow'. The adverb was formed in the ordinary English way by adding the suffix -ly, which descends from Old English -lice meaning 'in the manner of'. By the medieval period 'narrowly' carried both the literal sense of closeness and the senses of 'closely, attentively' and 'by a slim margin'. The spelling trap sits in the doubled r and the -ow ending sitting before -ly, since the smooth pronunciation gives few clues to that doubling.

How the word is built

• narrow (from Old English nearu: tight, constricted)
• -ly (adverb suffix)