Definition of nary
dialect
: not any : not one I must have it back as I have nary other copy — Flannery O'Connor
nary a
ornary an
: not a single survived the accident with nary a scratch
From the M-W Editors
nary was our Word of the Day on 07/15/2013. Hear the podcast!
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Recent Examples of nary from the Web
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But there’s a whole world of salad out there with nary a lettuce leaf to be seen.
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Cities like Pittsburgh, Denver and, of course, Chicago have doled out millions of dollars in settlements and penalties for police brutality, with nary a chief getting fired or a cop being jailed.
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The video was shown yesterday at the company’s annual learning conference for executive directors, with nary a dry eye in the 700 seat auditorium.
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Meanwhile, Day-Lewis has been almost perversely choosy, racking up a modest 20 movies over the course of a 35-year career, with nary a robot car or poop icon among them.
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Dozens of obscure names scoot past the reader’s eye with nary a word of introduction or presentation.
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TODAY’S DAILY DIGIT A somewhat subjective rating of the day’s weather, on a scale of 0 to 10. 7/10: Moderately warm with nary a storm.
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TODAY’S DAILY DIGIT A somewhat subjective rating of the day’s weather, on a scale of 0 to 10. 7/10: Moderately warm with nary a storm.
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But it’s done in obvious pantomime, with nary a blot of fake blood.
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."
Origin and Etymology of nary
alteration of ne'er a
NARY Defined for English Language Learners
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