A miss is as good as a mile

(idea) by xunker (1.5 mon) Fri Jan 05 2001 at 6:35:43

It's an old expression, and It's one I'm quite fond of for some reason. The basic, long winded meaning would be:

"The event that we we were hoping would not affect us did not, indeed, affect us. Therefore, the threshold by which it did not effect us is no concern; It could be very large or very small, but I don't give a pair of dingoes kidneys how close of a shave it was. It missed us, and the amount of distance it missed us by it really not that important."
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(thing) by Gethsemane (1.7 wk) Fri Jan 05 2001 at 7:52:12
The earliest known record of this proverb in literature can be found in William Camden's Remains Concerning Britain (1605):

An ynche in a misse is as good as an ell.

A 1655 quote from Thomas Fuller illustrates the lengthy syntax of the proverb's original structure:

An hairs breadth fixed by a divine finger, shall prove as effectuall a separation from danger as a miles distance.

By the late 18th Century the proverb had been abridged to its current form.

Contrast Half a loaf is better than none.

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