Vintage Jet Slams Into Homes Near Air Show

Its like when people say "near miss." What they actually mean is "near
hit."

Its like when people say "near miss." What they actually mean is "near
hit."

No. There is no such thing as a "far hit". All hits are near... as
near as they can be. If you do not hit, you "nearly hit" but it is not
a "near hit'

However, misses come in many forms. You can miss by a mile (which is a
near miss in transatlantic aviation, and a far miss when diving into a
swimming pool). You can miss by inches, which is a near miss when
aviating and a far miss when doing brain surgery. None of these "nearly
missed", they most definately missed.

Jose
--
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"Near miss" despite the grammatical error, implies a hit: it nearly
missed. i.e. it hit.

"Nearly hit" is what people mean when they say "near miss."

"Near miss" despite the grammatical error, implies a hit: it nearly
missed. i.e. it hit.

"Near miss" is not a grammatical error, and it does not imply a hit. It
implies (in fact, it also declares) a miss - a non-impact.

I don't know of anybody that interprets "near miss" as a hit, and "near"
is not the same as "nearly".

When I got lost at the zoo, I nearly got near the alligator.

Jose
--
The monkey turns the crank and thinks he's making the music.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

"Skylune" wrote in message
lkaboutaviation.com...
"Near miss" despite the grammatical error, implies a hit: it nearly
missed. i.e. it hit.

"Nearly hit" is what people mean when they say "near miss."

Professors and editors have been going round and round about this forever.
It's one of those things where, at the end of the day, you just shrug it off
and say "The people have decided that 'near miss' means 'near hit' much as
the word 'awesome' now means 'cool' and 'hot.'")

-c

Yeah. I'm just picking up on what an English professor used to rant
about...

He also used to get on weathermens' cases and sportscasters. He got riled
up when an announcer would say the baserunner has "good speed" or when a
weather broadcaster would say "shower activity" instead of "rain."

(Since you are a journalist, you might like the old set of Edwin Newman
books, "Strictly Speaking" and "A Civil Tongue." Newman, correctly IMO,
has great criticism for those who wreck the language. )

Yeah. I'm just picking up on what an English professor used to rant
about...

Right... like "higher" has two syllables, and "fire" has one. So what
about "hire"?

And don't get me started about clocks running "fast".

Jose
--
The monkey turns the crank and thinks he's making the music.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Exactly. My favorite is people who use the word "further" instead of
"farther."

On Tue, 18 Jul 2006 18:11:04 GMT, Jose
wrote:

Yeah. I'm just picking up on what an English professor used to rant
about...

Right... like "higher" has two syllables, and "fire" has one. So what
about "hire"?

And don't get me started about clocks running "fast".

This looks like fun. How about syllables and hyphenation in
theater/theatre?

That PED tag is hard to resist.

Don

Skylune wrote:
Its like when people say "near miss." What they actually mean is "near
hit."


No, near is modifying either miss or hit. A near hit means that you
actually had to hit something.

Matt