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Comment by lionkor | Hacker News Reader

FYI "all but impossible" usually means the opposite of what you think it means - "all but" meaning "everything except". Seen this usage a lot and it bothers me, because both usages are common and theyre the exact opposites.

If I didn't have context clues, it'd be difficult to know which one you mean.

Edit: not native but I've always understood it as the first def here https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/all+but

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100% of the usage I've encountered as a native speaker is "all but impossible" = "almost impossible".

This stems from "all but" = "almost"[0]

[0]https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/all%20but

Agreed, to me the meaning unpacks like: "it meets or exceeds every category of difficulty that is less severe than Impossible."

Compare to a disaster described as "the destruction is all-but-total".

That phrase does not mean "you could describe the destruction by any label except total." For example, whatever just happened it definitely not "tiny" or "moderate".

It's an idiom and means "nearly impossible". There is no other usage.

“All but” = “almost” (which presumably historically was “all most”).

Like “all but dead”. Everything except dead, as in as close to death as possible without actually being dead (and certainly not the opposite of dead, as in perfect health).

I'm not sure how it makes sense to claim that an action is "everything except impossible." This is more in the classic sense of "the battle was all but lost" for a battle was practically but not actually lost. You could implement a queue in a Python server, but it would be technically awful to do.

In this context I meant “all but” == “everything except” i.e it is almost impossible. Are you saying it means the opposite of how I used it? I’m not certain what you mean.

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