Hello! This week on Ask a Teacher, we answer a question from Haruna in Japan about the usage of the words “near” and “nearby.”
Dear Teacher,
Today, I have a question about two words, "near" and "nearby.”
What is [the] difference between these two words?
Thank you and best regards,
I’m happy to answer this question, Haruna.
Both words can mean “close in distance to something.”
The word “near” also has other meanings, as we will see.
We can put the word “nearby” at the end of a sentence. For example, if you are in someone’s house and a person in the house says:
That means the market is close to the house. The speaker does not need to say the word “house” because the word “nearby” means close to the place already stated or known.
However, when we use the word “near” to say where something is, we say both places. The following example shows this:
The following two examples also show this difference in usage between “nearby” and “near”:
We can also use “nearby” as an adjective before a noun, as in this example:
Other uses of “near”
Next, let’s look at three other ways we can use the word “near.” We can use it as an adverb to express the idea that something will happen soon in the future, as in this example:
We can also use “near” as a compound adjective, as in the following example:
Remember that when we write compound adjectives, we must put a hyphen, or short line, connecting the two adjectives.
Lastly, we can use the word “near” as a verb, meaning “getting close to in time,” as in this example:
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And that’s Ask a Teacher.
I’m Andrew Smith.
Andrew Smith wrote this lesson for VOA Learning English.