nary

adjective \ ˈner-ē \

Updated on: 3 Apr 2018

Definition of nary

dialect

: not any : not one

I must have it back as I have nary other copy
—Flannery O'Connor

— nary a or nary an

: not a single

survived the accident with nary a scratch

See nary defined for English-language learners

nary was our Word of the Day on 07/15/2013. Hear the podcast!

Recent Examples of nary from the Web

Designed for himself and his family, the box-like home features clean, minimalist interiors inspired by traditional Japanese tatami rooms, with nary a nautical trope in sight.

— lauren ro, Curbed, "This houseboat doesn’t look like a houseboat at all," 27 Mar. 2018
Nail the throttle, and the supercharged A6 leaps forward with nary a chirp of the tires.

— michael simari, Car and Driver, "2018 Audi A6," 22 Mar. 2018
Closing out our @sxsw on the highest note possible: a spectacular late night set by @texasgentlemen with nary a stationary posterior.

— gary graff, Billboard, "The Texas Gentlemen Hold Their Own With Homegrown 'Tx Jelly' at SXSW," 17 Mar. 2018
When the Lindholms returned to the beach the next day, Big Fishy was gone, nary a trace of him to be found.

— tess koman, Cosmopolitan, "Another Day, Another GIANT UNIDENTIFIABLE SEA MONSTER Washed Up on an Australian Shore," 9 Mar. 2018
With precision and thrumming intensity, Adeyemi crafts 540-plus pages of relentless, focused action with nary a blurry moment.

— katie ward beim-esche, The Christian Science Monitor, "'Children of Blood and Bone' is a sweeping epic, perfect for fans of Laini Taylor and 'Black Panther'," 8 Mar. 2018
For more than a century oil and gas pipelines were built beneath the United States with nary any notice from the public.

— james osborne, Houston Chronicle, "Pipeline CEOs lament anti-oil movement slowing pipeline construction," 8 Mar. 2018
Others are disquieting bit players given promine through tight closeups in the film's boxy aspect ratio, who say nary a word, their marked and haggard faces saying more than any dialogue ever could.

— boyd van hoeij, The Hollywood Reporter, "'The Weak Ones' ('Los debiles'): Film Review | Berlin 2018," 21 Feb. 2018
As the big day approaches, there's been nary a word about who will join the former Mouseketeer onstage Sunday.

— eder campuzano, OregonLive.com, "Justin Timberlake wants to perform with a Prince hologram at the Super Bowl? That's a bad idea," 3 Feb. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'nary.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Did You Know?

Nary, often used in the phrase "nary a" to mean "not a single," is an 18th century alteration of the adjectival phrase "ne'er a," in which "ne'er" is a contraction of "never." That contraction dates to the 13th century, and the word it abbreviates is even older: "never" can be traced back to Old English "nǽ fre," a combination of "ne" ("not" or "no") and "ǽfre" ("ever"). Old English "ne" also combined with "ā" ("always") to give us "nā," the Old English ancestor of our "no." "Ā," from the Latin aevum ("age" or "lifetime") and Greek aiōn ("age"), is related to the English adverb aye, meaning "always, continually, or ever. This "aye" (pronounced to rhyme with "say") is unrelated to the more familiar "aye" (pronounced to rhyme with "sigh") used as a synonym of "yes."