From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishnear missnear missa) when a bomb, plane, car etc nearly hits something but does not a near miss between two passenger aircraft over the airport b) a situation in which something almost happens, or someone almost achieves something → near
Examples from the Corpus
near miss• The asteroid flew within 106,000 miles of Earth, which astronomers considered a near miss.• Owen had, however, the sense of relief that follows a near miss.• Julie Worden and Charlton Boyd meet in a skittish duet, marked by sudden departures, near misses and unexpected evasive leaps.• None the less, we do have records of many near misses from relatively modern sources.• He had had numerous prangs and near misses in his motoring life and not one of them had been his fault.• Thus near misses of comets and asteroids are well documented by modern observations, and grazing impacts also occur.• There were two near misses on the airport's runways between 1998 and 1999.• They had a near miss on the Ober Gabelhorn summit.• There were lots of near misses: some great saves from both keepers, and sheer bad luck.• The little girl who had had the near miss with the blackboard was the daughter of a minister. 