Comes closer to something or someone in time or distance.
From Old English 'neah' meaning near or nigh, combined with the verbal suffix '-r' to create a verb. It's related to Old Saxon 'nah' and Proto-Germanic '*nah-', all meaning close or near.
The verb 'near' is fascinating because English lost most of its Old English -r verb formations, so words like 'near,' 'clear,' and 'fear' are linguistic fossils—they're remnants of how Anglo-Saxon speakers turned adjectives into actions.
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