| 词组 | nowhere near |
| 释义 | nowhere near Usage handbooks typically describe nowhere near as a colloquial or informal substitute for not nearly. The Century Collegiate Handbook back in 1924 went so far as to call it "vulgar," but most recent commentators have regarded it with more tolerance, limiting themselves to the advice that it should be avoided in formal speech and writing. The OED shows that it is an extremely old phrase, attested in writing (in the form nowhere nigh) as far back as 1413. Its common use in writing, however, seems not to have occurred until recently. The bulk of our written evidence for it is from the past several decades. What that evidence shows is that the written contexts in which nowhere near occurs do, in fact, tend toward informality, but they need not be extremely informal. Nowhere near has a somewhat more emphatic quality than not nearly, and that can make it an appropriate choice in a variety of contexts: • ... he wrote, "Western Europe has nowhere near the shocking degree of juvenile crime...." —Dorothy Barclay, N.Y. Times Mag, 9 Jan. 1955 • Although a large majority of the respondents can justify extramarital sex, nowhere near as many are actually engaging in it —Robert Athanasiou et al., Psychology Today, July 1970 • ... household bulbs last nowhere near that long — Forbes, 1 Dec. 1970 • ... as a writer ... Jackie Collins is nowhere near ready for the big time —Genevieve Stuttaford, Publishers Weekly, 14 Apr. 1975 • ... illustration after World War I was nowhere near as good as it had been before that —Newgate Calendar, N. Y. Times Book Rev., 26 July 1981 It is certainly true, however, that nowhere near continues to be more common in speech than in writing. A distinct use of nowhere near is in the sense "not at all close to": • Teddy bears, thank goodness, are nowhere near extinction —Carolyn Meyer, McCall's, March 1971 • ... our present health insurance policy comes nowhere near providing that —Sylvia Porter, Ladies' Home Jour., August 1971 This sense has the same emphatic quality as the "not nearly" sense, and it also is most likely to occur in speech. |
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