narrow.
Having a small width; not wide; having opposite edges or sides that are close, especially by comparison to length or depth.
Meaning & usage
Having a small width; not wide; having opposite edges or sides that are close, especially by comparison to length or depth.
a narrow hallway
Of little extent; very limited; circumscribed.
Restrictive; without flexibility or latitude.
a narrow interpretation
Contracted; of limited scope; bigoted.
a narrow mind
narrow views
Having a small margin or degree.
a narrow escape
The Republicans won by a narrow majority.
Limited as to means; straitened
narrow circumstances
Parsimonious; niggardly; covetous; selfish.
Scrutinizing in detail; close; accurate; exact.
Formed (as a vowel) by a close position of some part of the tongue in relation to the palate; or (according to Bell) by a tense condition of the pharynx; distinguished from wide.
Of or supporting only those text characters that can fit into the traditional 8-bit representation.
a narrow character; a narrow stream
Where this word comes from
From Middle English narow, narowe, narewe, narwe, naru, from Old English nearu (“narrow, strait, confined, constricted, not spacious, limited, petty; limited, poor, restricted; oppressive, causing anxiety (of that which restricts free action of body or mind), causing or accompanied by difficulty, hardship, oppressive; oppressed, not having free action; strict, severe”), from Proto-West Germanic *naru, from Proto-Germanic *narwaz (“constricted, narrow”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ner- (“to turn, bend, twist, constrict”). Cognates Cognate with North Frisian naar, noar, noor, nåår (“narrow”), Saterland Frisian noar (“narrow”), Dutch naar (“nasty, scary; sickening, unpleasant”), Danish and Swedish nor (“narrow strait”); also Sanskrit नृत् (nṛt, “to dance; act on stage, represent”).
A narrow passage, especially a contracted part of a stream, lake, or sea; a strait connecting two bodies of water.
the narrows of New York harbor
Where this word comes from
From Middle English narow, narowe, narewe, narwe, naru, from Old English nearu (“narrow, strait, confined, constricted, not spacious, limited, petty; limited, poor, restricted; oppressive, causing anxiety (of that which restricts free action of body or mind), causing or accompanied by difficulty, hardship, oppressive; oppressed, not having free action; strict, severe”), from Proto-West Germanic *naru, from Proto-Germanic *narwaz (“constricted, narrow”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ner- (“to turn, bend, twist, constrict”). Cognates Cognate with North Frisian naar, noar, noor, nåår (“narrow”), Saterland Frisian noar (“narrow”), Dutch naar (“nasty, scary; sickening, unpleasant”), Danish and Swedish nor (“narrow strait”); also Sanskrit नृत् (nṛt, “to dance; act on stage, represent”).
To reduce in width or extent; to contract.
We need to narrow the search.
To get narrower.
The road narrows.
To partially lower one's eyelids in a way usually taken to suggest a defensive, aggressive or penetrating look.
He stepped in front of me, narrowing his eyes to slits.
She wagged her finger in his face, and her eyes narrowed.
To contract the size of, as a stocking, by taking two stitches into one.
To convert to a data type that cannot hold as many distinct values.
to narrow an int variable to a short variable
Where this word comes from
From Middle English narwen (“to narrow”); see there for more details, but ultimately derived from the noun.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.