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say it: nir
near is an adjective, adverb and verb meaning "not far distant in time or space or degree or circumstances". It is pronounced /ˈnɪɹ/ — nir. It carries 9 recorded senses.
giving or spending with reluctance
“our cheeseparing administration”
“very close (or near) with his money”
“a penny-pinching miserly old man”
very close in resemblance
“sketched in an approximate likeness”
“a near likeness”
(of actions or states) slightly short of or not quite accomplished; all but
“the job is (just) about done”
“the baby was almost asleep when the alarm sounded”
“we're almost finished”
“the car all but ran her down”
“he nearly fainted”
“talked for nigh onto 2 hours”
“the recording is well-nigh perfect”
“virtually all the parties signed the contract”
“I was near exhausted by the run”
“most everyone agrees”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for near come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.