Definition of "well-nigh" []

• Nearly; almost. (adverb)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Eventually, without losing a single man, this unit of the Royal Navy systematically destroyed all French fortifications, more than one hundred heavy cannon, stretching about seventy miles from San Sebastián to Santander (except for the well-nigh impregnable Castro-Urdiales)."
• "This is the well-nigh inevitable result of having free trade between a country with a very low savings rate and one with a very high one like China."
• "But the city folk constituted a new and terrible destructive force, the equilibrium was overthrown, and the poppies well-nigh perished."