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

New studies, however, clearly show that medical marijuana is not nearly as effective as the pro-marijuana lobby heralds. —Mike Gimbel, Baltimore Sun, 15 Jan. 2026

And the jump from 10 to 36 is not nearly as unlikely as from Playoffs to 36. —Alex Zietlow, Charlotte Observer, 12 Jan. 2026

Even writers not nearly as skilled as Melville could craft valuable works of their own out of this drama, and plenty have. —Jacob Brogan, Washington Post, 9 Jan. 2026

And that’s one of the reasons that having most people using just a single chatbot of ChatGPT, which obviously only works with OpenAI models, is not nearly as good of a feature as one where people can use different models in different contexts and try them out and switch between them. —Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic, 9 Jan. 2026

Rhymes for not nearly

• austerely
• severely
• sincerely
• cavalierly
• clearly
• dearly
• merely
• queerly
• yearly