A miss is as good as a mile

1. A near miss is still a miss and therefore no better than missing by a great margin. Losing a game by one point is still losing.

Idioms and Phrases

Coming close to success but failing is no better than failing by a lot, as in He was beaten by just one vote, but a miss is as good as a mile . This proverbial expression, first recorded in 1614, is a shortening of the older form, “An inch of a miss is as good [or bad] as a mile of a miss.”