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Well-nigh   /wɛl-naɪ/   Listen
Well-nigh

adverb
1.
(of actions or states) slightly short of or not quite accomplished; all but.  Synonyms: about, almost, most, near, nearly, nigh, virtually.  "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"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Well-nigh" Quotes from Famous Books



... John Carmichael drank ale, and talked with the guards, and waited;—and waited, and talked with the guards, and drank ale, until his patience was well-nigh gone. At last, just when the day was breaking, he went to the door of the ante-room to listen, and hearing nothing, he knocked, and receiving no answer, he unlocked the door and peeped in, not wishing to disturb the maid-of-honour, but merely to satisfy himself that all ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson

... July, August and September, the heat at times is well-nigh intolerable both by day and night. You arise in the morning played out after a comfortless night under a punkah, which, hung over your bed in the limited space of a mosquito house, is pulled with a rope passing through the wall by a coolie stationed on the verandah outside. With the thermometer ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... merely human birth, E'en here, where shapes immortal throng'd, intrude? Yet ah! thou poorest of the sons of earth, For once, I e'en to thee feel gratitude. Despair the power of sense did well-nigh blast, And thou didst save me ere I sank dismay'd, So giant-like the vision seem'd, so vast, I felt myself shrink ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... a choir of colored singers, young men and women, went forth from Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn., and introduced a peculiar variety of songs and music, which they and their successors have carried with eclat well-nigh round the world. They not only awoke the enthusiasm of vast audiences in the large cities of America and Europe, but they were invited to sing before the mightiest monarchs and the most distinguished people on the other side of the water. These singers were endowed richly with the sweet and ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 1, January, 1896 • Various

... could have been caught on a moving-picture film, Charlie Chaplin would have had an arthropod rival. It hooked on stems and pulled its bearer off his feet, it careened and ensnared the leaves of other ants, at one place mixing up with half a dozen. A big thistledown became tangled in it, and well-nigh blew away with leaf and all; hardly a foot of his path was smooth-going. But he persisted, and I watched him reach the nest, after two hours of tugging and falling and interference ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe


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