From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishnarrowlynar‧row‧ly /ˈnærəʊli $ -roʊ-/ ●○○ adverb 1 JUST/ALMOST NOTby only a small amount He was narrowly defeated in the election. One bullet struck his car, narrowly missing him. A man narrowly escaped death when a fire broke out in his home on Sunday morning.2 LIMITin a limited way OPP broadly The law is being interpreted too narrowly. These big general issues should be broken down into more narrowly focused questions.
Examples from the Corpus
narrowly• We will have to consider your proposal very narrowly.• Flying into the airport at Lima, we narrowly avoided a collision with another plane.• The bill was narrowly defeated in the Senate.• Although they spent only $ 160,600 on their campaign, they narrowly defeated the proposition 51-49 percent.• Auroux narrowly defeated the rival candidate, Henri Emmanuelli, by 113 votes to 109.• The article says Meyers narrowly escaped arrest in Rome last month.• He narrowly escaped arrest when the police raided his house.• In both cases, the journalists narrowly escaped injury but the houses from which they had been transmitting were devastated.• She narrowly failed to beat the world record in the 100 metres sprint.• A lot of workers have very narrowly focused job skills.• A similar proposal, brought by a shareholders rights group, was approved narrowly last year but rejected by the board.• Smith narrowly lost the election.• The bullet narrowly missed her.• Two or three weeks ago, a crossbow quarrel narrowly missed my face as we crossed the Lawnmarket.• It narrowly misses the corner of an executive's brief case.• A black BMW swerved, narrowly missing another car. 