the.com/near miss
A collision that didn't happen, named with breathtaking optimism for what actually missed everything.
means An event where something almost went wrong — a collision, accident, or failure narrowly avoided — though logically it describes a miss that came close, not a hit.
from A straightforward English compound of "near" (close) and "miss" (a failure to hit), in use since at least the early 20th century and popularized by aviation, where pilots reported "near misses" of other aircraft. Pedants have long grumbled that a "near miss" should really be a "near hit," since the planes did in fact miss — but the phrase stuck, the logic be damned.
- Backwards name
- It's a near hit; nothing nearly missed at all
- Aviation gold
- Pilots report thousands yearly to prevent the real thing
- George Carlin
- The comedian famously roasted the term's broken logic
- Safety science
- Tracking near misses predicts and prevents future disasters
apollo 13 oxygen tank — spacecraft explosion in 1970 killed no one but stranded three astronauts 200,000 miles from earth
chelyabinsk meteor 2013 — 60-meter asteroid exploded over russia with force of 20 nuclear bombs but struck unpopulated area