Neighbour

//ˈneɪbə// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A person living on adjacent or nearby land; a person situated adjacently or nearby; anything (of the same type of thing as the subject) in an adjacent or nearby position. UK

    "My neighbour has two noisy cats."

  2. 2
    a nearby object of the same kind wordnet
  3. 3
    One who is near in sympathy or confidence. UK

    "Buckingham / No more shall be the neighbour to my counsel."

  4. 4
    a person who lives (or is located) near another wordnet
  5. 5
    A fellow human being. UK

    "1982, Bible (NKJV), Leviticus 19:18, You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord."

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  1. 6
    Anything located directly adjacent to something else. UK

    "The flood fill algorithm fills an area with colour by starting at one pixel and recursively visiting its neighbours."

Verb
  1. 1
    To be adjacent to UK, transitive

    "Though France neighbours Germany, its culture is significantly different."

  2. 2
    be located near or adjacent to wordnet
  3. 3
    To be similar to, to be almost the same as. UK, figuratively, intransitive

    "That sort of talk is neighbouring on treason."

  4. 4
    live or be located as a neighbor wordnet
  5. 5
    To associate intimately with; to be close to. UK

    "[…] the barbarous Scythyan, […] / Shall bee as well neighbour’d, pittyed and relieued / As thou my ſometime daughter."

Synonyms

All synonyms
bydwellerbydwellerfellowfellow creaturefellow human beingfellow human being

Example

More examples

"I'll leave a key with my next-door neighbour in case you get here before I do."

Etymology

From Middle English neyghebour, neighebor, neighbour, neihebur, from Old English nēahġebūr (“neighbour”), from Proto-West Germanic *nāhwagabūrō, from Proto-Germanic *nēhwagabūrô (“neighbour”, literally “near-dweller”), equivalent to nigh (“near”) + bower (“farmer”). Cognate with Scots nichbour (“neighbour”), Saterland Frisian Noaber (“neighbour”), Dutch nabuur (“neighbour”), German Low German Naber (“neighbour”), German Nachbar (“neighbour”), Danish nabo (“neighbour”), Norwegian nabo (“neighbour”), Icelandic nábúi (“neighbour”), Finnish naapuri (“neighbour”), Estonian naaber (“neighbour”). Eclipsed non-native Middle English prome (“neighbour”), borrowed from Old French proeme, proime, proisme (“neighbour”) (<< Latin proximus (“nearest, next”).

Related phrases

beat my neighbour out of doorsbeat your neighbour out of doorsbeggar-my-neighbourbeggar-thy-neighbourgood fences make good neighbourslove for one's neighbourorthographic neighbourphonological neighbourtext door neighbouranother housefellow human beingfriendly person

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.