Well-nigh
adv ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Almost, nearly. not-comparable
"The ſame ſo ſore annoyed has the Knight, / That welnigh choked with the deadly ſtinke, / His forces faile, ne can no lenger fight."
- 1 (of actions or states) slightly short of or not quite accomplished; all but wordnet
Example
More examples"It was in mid-summer, when the alchemy of Nature transmutes the sylvan landscape to one vivid and almost homogeneous mass of green; when the senses are well-nigh intoxicated with the surging seas of moist verdure and the subtly indefinable odours of the soil and the vegetation."
Etymology
From Middle English wel-neigh (“physically close to; near in time to; almost, nearly; closely”) [and other forms], from Old English wel nēah, wel nēh, from wel (“well”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *welh₁- (“to choose; to want”)) + nēah, nēh (“close, near”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂neḱ- (“to attain, reach”)). Synchronically a univerbation of well (“completely, fully; to a significant degree”) + nigh (“close by, near”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.