Other forms: narrower, narrows, narrowed, narrowing, narrowest
Narrow means there is very little space from one side to the other. An alley where two people cannot pass, a single bed pushed against the wall, a strip of pavement squeezed beside the road.
The opposite is wide, not thin — a book can be thin and a lane narrow, and swapping them sounds wrong. Narrow is a verb as well: the road narrows after the bridge, she narrowed her eyes, the gap between the two runners narrowed. Figures of speech lean on it hard — a narrow escape is one you only just survived, a narrow victory is won by very little, and someone narrow-minded will not hear a new idea. You also narrow down a long list until a few names are left. Only the physical sense takes a measurement: two metres wide, never two metres narrow.
1adjectivenarrowMeasuring a small distance from one side to the other.
“The stairs to the attic are steep and narrow.”
2adjectivewonWon, missed or avoided by a very small margin.
“The bill passed by a narrow majority of four votes.”
3adjectivelimitedLimited in range or in what it will consider.
“His reading is narrow: three authors and nothing else.”
4verbbecomeTo become or make less wide, or to reduce a range of things.
“The path narrows to a track once you pass the farm.”
Narrow comes from Old English nearu, and that word carried more than a measurement — it meant confined and constricted, but also oppressive, hard-pressed, anxious. Behind it stand Proto-Germanic *narwaz, "constricted, narrow", and Proto-Indo-European *(s)ner-, "to turn, bend, twist, constrict". Modern English kept the tight space and dropped the dread, though a narrow escape still holds a little of it.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)ner- — to turn, bend, twist, constrict
Proto-Germanic
*narwaz — constricted, narrow
Proto-West Germanic
*naru
Old English
nearu — narrow, strait, confined, constricted, not spacious, limited, petty; limited, poor, restricted; oppressive, causing anxiety (of that which restricts free action of body or mind), causing or accompanied by difficulty, hardship, oppressive; oppressed, not having free action; strict, severe
Middle English
narow
English, today
narrow
From Middle English narow, narowe, narewe, narwe, naru, from Old English nearu (“narrow, strait, confined, constricted, not spacious, limited, petty; limited, poor, restricted; oppressive, causing anxiety (of that which restricts free action of body or mind), causing or accompanied by difficulty, hardship, oppressive; oppressed, not having free action; strict, severe”), from Proto-West Germanic naru, from Proto-Germanic narwaz (“constricted, narrow”), from Proto-Indo-European (s)ner- (“to turn, bend, twist, constrict”). 2 Cognate with frr naar, noar, noor, nåår (“narrow”), stq noar (“narrow”), Dutch naar (“nasty, scary; sickening, unpleasant”), Danish and Swedish nor (“narrow strait”); also Sanskrit नृत् (“to dance; act on stage, represent”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA