Nord User Forum

Tasten-Bert wrote:Sorry, folks, if I had known before, I wouldn‘t have started this quarrel. Stay happy and healthy.

No worries - we probably all learned something

Sent from my phone in brevity

Tasten-Bert wrote:Sorry, folks, if I had known before, I wouldn‘t have started this quarrel. Stay happy and healthy.

It’s all good. I apologise for the confusing wording.

analogika wrote:

maxpiano wrote:

analogika wrote:Guys. It’s a fixed phrase. A figure of speech, and it means „almost“.

https://www.lexico.com/definition/all_but

Nope, also in those examples it means "except", but let's wait for some native speakers to give us the final... word

The link explicitly says:

„Meaning of all but in English:

all but
PHRASE

1. Very nearly.“

Also… I AM a native speaker.

Then someone should write to the Collins Dictionary guys because they have a different opinion on the meaning ranking
(actually it can have both meanings, so at the end of the day I learned that it can have also the one you use , even if this makes that expression possibly confusing )

@Tasten-Bert: now worries, it is not bad to enriched a techie discussion with some humanistic topic sometimes

Geez I hope you guys aren't going to start analysing the use of idiom and colloquialism by us English speakers in too much detail. Otherwise all but one of us Aussies are gonna be all but in the sh!t

and check merriam webster...

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

which lists ONLY the definition as originally used in this thread.

Which doesn't mean Collins' other definition is wrong... but Collins' first listed definition is less an explanation of its use as a phrase, and more one of simply showing you can use the word all to mean all, and the word but to mean but, and indeed you can put the two together. It doesn't really show any meaning beyond what the component words simply mean on their face. Sometimes, the words simply end up next to each other. But as an idiomatic phrase with an independent meaning, it's Collin's second definition (and MW's only definition) that describes it.

I thought this was strictly a place for keys talk - turns out it is anything but.

C’mon! We were all but done...

I am not native, but isn't the meaning suggested by maxpiano expressed by "anything but", which, to my ears, indeed means the *opposite* of "all but"?

Linux is all but irrelevant ---> indeed almost irrelevant
Linux is anything but irrelevant ---> very relevant, couldn't be more relevant

Hlaalu wrote:I am not native, but isn't the meaning suggested by maxpiano expressed by "anything but", which, to my ears, indeed means the *opposite* of "all but"?

Linux is all but irrelevant ---> indeed almost irrelevant
Linux is anything but irrelevant ---> very relevant, couldn't be more relevant

You have defined both of those sentences correctly. However, the second meaning for the two words "all but" discussed above is something different.

All but two of the apples are red ---> There are a lot of apples. They're all red, except for two.