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Synonyms

miss by a mile

Idioms  

  1. Fall short, fail by a considerable amount, as in Your guess as to the winner missed by a mile. This expression employs miss in the sense of “fail to hit something aimed at,” a usage dating from the late 1400s, and by a mile for a great distance or interval, so used since Shakespeare's day.

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

“I kind of had to step away from that a little bit because it wasn’t a sure thing that we were going to nail it. And it’s one of those things where you miss by an inch, you miss by a mile.”

From New York Times

The story of a Mason County home offers a peek into how one of Seattle-based Zillow’s most popular features can miss by a mile — and how hard it is to get it right.

From Seattle Times

We won’t just miss the target, we’ll miss by a mile.

From Time

The danger, though, is that online searches can be like going to the moon: if you’re off by an inch, you miss by a mile.”

From New York Times

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.