Clark wrote:
Jim Logajan wrote:
Clark wrote:
D Ramapriya wrote:
Was wondering about this term "near-miss"... shouldn't a near-miss
actually be a collision and a near-collision a miss?

No. It seems some folks fail to understand that a "miss" can be near
or far and still be a miss.

Sorry, but the phrase "far miss" appears at best to be an oxymoron.
In fact "near miss" appears in various Thesaurus as a synonym for
"collision".


The phrase you are looking for is nearly missed.

On reading the exchange between you and Ramapriya I entered the following
search pattern in Google to see who might consider "near miss" as a synonym
for "collision":
"near miss" collision synonym
And this was returned as the first result:
http://freethesaurus.net/s.php?q=collision

A near miss is defined by wordweb as a narrowly missed collision. In
other words, I suggest you consult higher quality reference material.

But "near miss" is an idiom ("idiom" being used here to mean "an expression
whose meaning is not predictable from the usual meanings of its constituent
elements.") Trying to rationalize an idiom like "near miss" is
counterproductive. The idiom is probably confusing to people learning the
English language.