The aviation community also regularly uses the somewhat oxymoronic term "near miss" to describe an instance where two airplanes almost collide. I have always wondered why the much more accurate phrase "near collision" is never used. All I can come up with is that some anonymous advisory committee staffer sought to coin a term that would not upset people unduly (or attract unwanted media attention!). Update: I am now told this term had its origin in World War II.

Jim Benes of WBBM Newsradio 78, Chicago's all-news station, emailed recently to report a running battle — certain morning-drive staff members vs. evening-drive, as it happened — over the phrase "near miss." The morning people, he said, thought the term could be confusing: "After all, if you nearly miss something, don't you hit it?" At first blush, "near miss" does seem to be a contradiction in terms, even though it's deeply ingrained in the language. But Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage (1994), tracing the phrase to World War II, notes its ubiquity and concludes that "despite its apparent lack of logic, it is not an error." Fowler's Modern English Usage defines a near miss simply as "a miss that was nearly a hit." (That's from the 1968 edition; the 1996 Fowler's omits the phrase, which suggests that it's no longer deemed worthy of discussion.) As an alternative, "near-collision" is unambiguous and unchallengeable. But WBBM's evening-drive cadre is also on target, as it were, with near miss.

It is futile to protest that "near miss" should be "near collision." This expression is a condensed version of something like "a miss that came very near to being a collision" and is similar to "narrow escape." Everyone knows what is meant by it and almost everyone uses it. It should be noted that the expression can also be used in the sense of almost succeeding in striking a desired target: "His Cointreau soufflé was a near miss."

Logical quibbles insisting that this locution really means "near hit" show no sign of unseating this Standard idiom. It means "a close call" as distinguished from a miss that never truly threatened to hit at all. It's used especially of airplanes that nearly collide and of all sorts of shooting results, and you should be aware that some stylebooks now insist on near collision or something similar.