neighbor

Pluralneighbors

Formsneighbors, neighboring, neighbored

1. 1
   next doornouncountable

   A person who lives next door or close by, a person who is next to or near someone else, or anything next to or near another thing of its kind.

   Our neighbors across the hall water our plants when we travel.

   During the concert, my neighbor kept checking his phone.

   Note

   The word's history explains this everyday sense: Old English nēahġebūr meant literally "near-dweller," from nigh, "near," and bower in its old meaning of "farmer." Nearness, not friendship, is the point, so the word reaches easily past houses and land. In Edith Wharton's The Custom of the Country (1913), Undine's neighbor is simply the person beside her, who picks up the opera glass she drops.

2. 2
   fellow humannouncountable

   In biblical and religious language, any fellow human being, not only someone who lives nearby.

   The sermon reminded the congregation that every stranger is a neighbor.

   Each night she prayed for her neighbors in every land, people she would never meet.

   Note

   Its home is the commandment in Leviticus 19:18, "you shall love your neighbor as yourself," which shares a verse with the ban on vengeance and grudges. Sermons and religious writing draw on that line when they speak of duty to others, so in this setting the word carries obligation: a neighbor is someone you are bound to treat well, near or far.

3. 3
   lie besideverbtransitive

   To be next to something, lying alongside it or sharing a border with it.

   Several farms neighbor the national forest to the north.

   The hotel, which neighbors the convention center, fills up fast during trade shows.

   Similarborder, adjoin, abut

   Note

   The verb takes its object directly, with no preposition: France neighbors Germany, and the farms neighbor the forest. Geography is its natural ground, and an old one: George Sandys in 1615 describes hills that "neighbour the shore." The subject need not be a place, though; Robert Guthrie MacGregor's translation of the Greek Anthology hails Hermes as one "who neighbourest the rock-born rill."

4. 4
   trusted friendnouncountable

   A person who is close to someone in sympathy or in trust, sharing that person's feelings or confidences.

   Buckingham / No more shall be the neighbour to my counsel.

   c. 1593, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Richard the Third:”

   Note

   The closeness here is of the mind, and Shakespeare shows it in Richard III: the king resolves that Buckingham "no more shall be the neighbour to my counsel," meaning he will no longer confide in him. The phrase carries the next-door meaning inward, so that to stand beside someone's counsel is to share their secrets.

5. 5
   keep companyverbintransitive

   To associate closely or intimately with someone, or to be close to them.

   Out on the prairie, settlers neighbored with whoever lived within a day's ride, trading labor and news.

   We don't neighbor much with the new owners, but we wave when we pass.

   Similarsocialize, associate

   Note

   Shakespeare sets this verb among words of care. Lear, disowning Cordelia, swears that a barbarous Scythian will be as well "neighbour'd," pitied and relieved as his "sometime daughter," so to be neighbored there is to be held close and looked after. It is the action behind the confidant noun: one names the person kept close, the other the keeping.

6. 6
   be similarverbfigurativelyintransitive

   To be similar to something, or almost the same as it; used with on.

   Remarks like these neighbor on slander, and the lawyers know it.

   By the end of the season, her devotion to the team was neighboring on obsession.

   Similarborder, verge

   Note

   Here the bordering verb becomes a measure of degree: talk that is neighboring on treason stands so close to it that it is nearly treason itself. The verb always takes on before what it approaches, and it works much like border on, which draws the same picture of a shared edge.

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