On Wed, 20 Jan 2016 15:21:52 -0500, nospam wrote:

it's a near *hit*, not a near miss. a near miss means you actually hit.
a complete miss means no collision occurred.

That's interesting.
See? You have an attention to detail the others can't comprehend.

I study WWII history and have always heard of "near misses" causing
damager to, say, a ship's rudder.

I silently had trouble with that, because that's a hit, not a miss.
But they call them near misses anyway.

I didn't think about it all that much, other than to simply assume
a near miss was actually a minor hit, so I will post to alt.usage.english
to figure this one out (in gory detail) since I love detailed answers.

Most people can't handle details.
You can.