near thing

1. 1.

   something that barely avoids failure or disaster

   Broaderavoidance

Questions about near thing

What does near thing mean?

near thing means "something that barely avoids failure or disaster".

Is near thing a common word?

near thing is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.