| 词组 | near miss |
| 释义 | near miss People who like their language logical sometimes complain about this phrase, arguing that it ought to be near collision or near hit. As originally used during World War II, near miss described a bomb that exploded in the water near enough to a ship to damage its hull: • Against surface vessels, a near miss by a dive bomber is often as effective as a direct hit, for it has all the underwater blasting effect of a torpedo —Lt. Robert A. Winston, Aircraft Carrier, 1942 But after the war near miss (sometimes styled as a hyphenated compound: near-miss) took on different associations, commonly describing a narrowly avoided collison or other mishap: • ... if the sun had not experienced a near-miss from a passing star —Wilson D. Wallis, Southwestern Jour, of Anthropology, Spring 1950 • ... near misses by badly driven vehicles —New Yorker, 19 June 1954 • The Federal Aviation Administration ... defines a near miss as two planes coming within 500 feet of each other —Jeremy Main, Fortune, 14 Oct. 1985 It also has widespread figurative use in describing an attempt that falls just short of success: • The next two seasons saw near-misses in several big races —Bill Curling, British Racehorse, October 1979 Criticism of near miss has come more from the segment of the general public that writes letters to the editor than from usage commentators. Harper 1975, 1985 defends it, noting that the adjective near has as one of its senses "close, narrow" (as in "a near escape"), and that, in any case, near miss "is by now solidly entrenched in the American vocabulary" (as it is). Some writers and editors, especially in the field of aviation, have been persuaded to prefer near collision, but near miss continues to be a very common term, and, despite its apparent lack of logic, it is not an error. |
| 随便看 |
英语用法大全包含2888条英语用法指南，基本涵盖了全部常用英文词汇及语法点的翻译及用法，是英语学习的有利工具。