(superl.) Not distant or remote in place or time; near.
(superl.) Not remote in degree, kindred, circumstances, etc.; closely allied; intimate.
(a.) In a situation near in place or time, or in the course of events; near.
(a.) Almost; nearly; as, he was nigh dead.
(v. t. & i.) To draw nigh (to); to approach; to come near.
(prep.) Near to; not remote or distant from.
Example Sentences:
(1) Here was the purveyor of nigh on a third of the nation’s food openly promising a cut that will be barely noticed over time by consumers but will have a positive health impact.
(2) He was like the man with staring eyes who stumbled up and down Oxford Street with a placard declaring the end of the world to be nigh.
(3) But the deeply idiosyncratic Octopuss font on the station sign is a reminder that ‘77 was also the year of Donna Summer’s I Feel Love and Saturday Night Fever: the end of the world may have been nigh, but one corner of Berlin was boogying the night away to uphold western civilisation.
(4) Managing six toddlers is more than a challenge – it's a nigh-on physical impossibility, as my colleague Polly Toynbee pointed out last week.
(5) She was one of the most mature users of Twitter and her Twitter feed was so Tayloresque as to be nigh-on parodic, mixing passionate defences of Jackson with shout-outs to reality TV android Kim Kardashian and the occasional – and necessary – denials that she had re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-remarried ("Jason is my dearest friend!"
(6) In the era of omnipresent smartphones and tablets, these sacharrine treats are nigh-on inescapable, and as breakthrough hits are guaranteed millions of dollars in revenue (Candy Crush Saga alone generated $1.5bn last year), it's no wonder developers are employing increasingly clever psychological tricks to give their creations a crucial edge.
(7) Sue MacGregor presented the Today programme for nigh on 20 years; Peter Allen and Rhod Sharp have been working at 5 live since day one – 28 March 1994.
(8) Merkel responded that this was nigh-on impossible since it would require changes to the German constitution and around 10 separate legal changes, the sources said.
(9) It is not uncommon for illiberal – in this case, deeply authoritarian – regimes to use a security threat (whether real, imagined, or self-created) as a pretext for singling out alleged ‘traitors’ and cracking down on civil society and individual critics.” Lawyer Khalid Bagirov, who is acting on behalf of all four activists, said the arrests are politically motivated, and added that their acquittal is nigh on “impossible”.
(10) And, once the software is made, it's nigh-on impossible to shut down.
(11) Is the end nigh for the Department for Communities and Local Government?
(12) But just as Oliver Stone has managed to make a boring sequel to Wall Street, despite the real Wall Street's enthralling and nigh-on-cinematic recent wickedness (the inner Freudian torment of boring Shia LaBoeuf's boring character is apparently more interesting to Stone – once the great purveyor of conspiracy theories – than the near-collapse of capitalism), so the makers of the upcoming films about Facebook have missed an obvious trick with their movies.
(13) Now, he thinks, Ireland is playing catchup, and the time is nigh to start imagining a post-religion society.
(14) These patients all complained difficulty falling asleep; all said they usually slept less than 5 hr a nigh and woke up too early in the morning.
(15) It’s embarrassing that Clinton, whose political competence is nigh unparalleled, holds only an uncertain majority over his farcical campaign.
(16) If finding an apartment was difficult – a single woman who could afford to pay her own rent was clearly a hooker in the eyes of most landlords – winning serious work proved to be well nigh impossible.
(17) The need to change one's eating habits in order to treat a certain disease or a metabolic disorder may seem to impose a well nigh impossible task.
(18) Such timings are critical to creditors, and unprecedented January sale discounts were a clear sign that the end was nigh.
(19) Bishop said last week’s attack in London reinforced how, although authorities could track terrorist gangs and keep people under surveillance, it was “nigh on impossible” to keep track of individuals who self-radicalised and acted alone.
(20) The end is nigh is the consensus, but not that nigh.