not nearly
idiom
: much less than : not at all
There's not nearly enough flour for a cake here.
It's not nearly as late as I thought it was.
Examples of not nearly in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
So much of the work thus far has been done by tribes, and not nearly enough by the religious institutions that ran boarding schools or the local communities that staffed them or the general public that failed to notice them.
—
Casey Cep, The New Yorker, 29 Apr. 2024
The situation should improve in the Big 12, but not enough — not nearly enough — to fully close the shortfall.
—Jon Wilner, The Mercury News, 22 Apr. 2024
Ministry is not nearly as proficient as Chad Stahelski’s John Wick 4 or Matthias Schweighöfer’s Army of Thieves, but the pell-mell combat scenes are consistently cartoonish.
—Armond White, National Review, 19 Apr. 2024
And while there are not nearly enough lawyers to represent poor defendants in Maine, the problem is acute in rural areas.
—Callie Ferguson Ashley L. Conti, New York Times, 28 Mar. 2024
Indeed, younger generations who migrate for work are not nearly as interested in keeping local traditions alive, often considering the groves and their upkeep a burden.
—Pragathi Ravi, The Christian Science Monitor, 27 Mar. 2024
The legal arguments Congress's intent was not nearly so narrow, replies NYU law professor Andrew Weissmann.
—Nina Totenberg, NPR, 16 Apr. 2024
The YouGov survey also found that Californians are not nearly as depressed about their state as outsiders.
—Thomas Elias, The Mercury News, 5 Apr. 2024
There are not nearly enough stablecoins being used to seek yield to justify the conclusion that interest rate arbitrage drove the growth and decline of stablecoin balances around the last bull market.
—Mark Lurie, Forbes, 29 Mar. 2024
Casey Cep, The New Yorker, 29 Apr. 2024
The situation should improve in the Big 12, but not enough — not nearly enough — to fully close the shortfall.
—Jon Wilner, The Mercury News, 22 Apr. 2024
Ministry is not nearly as proficient as Chad Stahelski’s John Wick 4 or Matthias Schweighöfer’s Army of Thieves, but the pell-mell combat scenes are consistently cartoonish.
—Armond White, National Review, 19 Apr. 2024
And while there are not nearly enough lawyers to represent poor defendants in Maine, the problem is acute in rural areas.
—Callie Ferguson Ashley L. Conti, New York Times, 28 Mar. 2024
Indeed, younger generations who migrate for work are not nearly as interested in keeping local traditions alive, often considering the groves and their upkeep a burden.
—Pragathi Ravi, The Christian Science Monitor, 27 Mar. 2024
The legal arguments Congress's intent was not nearly so narrow, replies NYU law professor Andrew Weissmann.
—Nina Totenberg, NPR, 16 Apr. 2024
The YouGov survey also found that Californians are not nearly as depressed about their state as outsiders.
—Thomas Elias, The Mercury News, 5 Apr. 2024
There are not nearly enough stablecoins being used to seek yield to justify the conclusion that interest rate arbitrage drove the growth and decline of stablecoin balances around the last bull market.
—Mark Lurie, Forbes, 29 Mar. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'not nearly.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near not nearly
Cite this Entry
“Not nearly.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/not%20nearly. Accessed 2 May. 2024.
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