Nigh

Part of speech: adverb

Pronunciation: /naɪ/

Definitions

1. Near in time or distance, implying closeness in space or degree
2. Situated at a short distance or about to occur soon
3. Near to a particular point in space or shortly before an event

Etymology: Few English words have spent as long in one shape as "nigh." It descends unchanged in meaning from Old English "nēah," which meant near or nearby, and its ancestors reach back to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to reach," the idea being that something near is something you can reach out to touch. Along the way the word split from the adjective-like sense of nearness into the sense of approaching in time, so that "nigh" can describe both a place and an event about to happen. The sound is the most dramatic change. Middle English spelled the word "neygh," and it was pronounced with a vowel closer to the one in modern "nay," with the final consonant sounded. Over the centuries the spelling settled into "nigh" while the pronunciation shifted to the diphthong heard today, so the written form now hides the older sound. The "gh" that once sat in the middle of the word survives only in the spelling, a common pattern in English where letters that were pronounced in earlier centuries were kept as the language changed around them.

Synonyms: near, close

Antonyms: far, distant