Hacker News Reader

I agree with your criticism, but I don't get what is the problem with the first point (I am not a native speaker). Doesn't "nearly" just mean "close to" and not necessarily "less than"?

View on HN

I see what you mean, but there's a clear implication of "less than" in that particular case. In the same way, you can't say that a runner has "nearly crossed the finishing line" a few moments after they cross it.

Not to mention that it doesn't take a genius to see that a solid object folded in half is not going to be less than twice as thick!

That's precisely why I immediately thought of "nearly" meaning a bit more instead of a bit less.

It is still no clear to me what makes "nearly" in this particular case to mean "less than". Curiously enough, "nearly crossed the finish line" indeed sounds totally wrong to me.

It's context dependent. "nearly" means "not quite reaching the target", so if you are talking about "doubling" something, then "nearly doubling" it would mean to end up with slightly less than double.

That said, I believe it is usually used to mean "less than". In this case, I would use "just over" instead, ie, "closed, it's just over double that".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com