Barely and Nearly

You’re listening to a special edition of A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

Today we’re remembering some of our favorite conversations with some of our youngest listeners and with their parents.

Yeah, we often hear from parents and kids who listen to the show together.

Maybe the family’s listening in the car while they’re out running errands.

Or maybe they’re discussing words on the way to or from school.

That can lead to some very revealing conversations.

Hello, my name is Matt.

And Simon.

We’re from Waukesha, Wisconsin.

Simon and Matt, hello.

Welcome to the show.

What can we do for you?

Well, we had a question.

We were walking to school.

This was actually a couple years ago, and we’ve been waiting to call.

We finally did it.

So we were walking to school, and we had a question.

Simon, do you remember what words we were wondering about?

The difference between barely and nearly.

I was trying to think about it for a minute because they seemed similar.

But then I used sort of my dad kind of approach was like, well, if you pardon my bluntness, but if you nearly poop your pants, then you almost did, but you’re in the clear.

If you barely poop your pants, it seemed like you just a little bit not good, better go change.

So that was my dad’s approach at translating it and putting it in a very clearly painted sort of setup for Simon.

And we’ve kind of explored that because there’s sort of subtle opposites.

But, Simon, you had one too, right?

What was your thought on it?

Like if you nearly fell off a cliff, you barely hung on.

And then if you barely fell off, you nearly hung on.

Yeah, kind of.

Yeah, yeah, it’s true.

It’s all about those circumstances, right?

So you might almost think about it as a timeline where there’s an event.

And nearly is before the event and barely is after the event, right?

Right, right.

It seems like it gets, because when we were trying to look at opposites,

You couldn’t say, like, I nearly died versus I barely died.

Right.

There’s a completeness.

It seems to work only if there were, like, shades of something, in a sense.

Yeah, timing-wise, it seems to fit that.

Yeah, so it’s more about chronological.

It’s more about time than it is about them being opposites.

That’s so interesting because I think of it in terms of space.

I’m thinking visually.

Like if I reach my finger out and I nearly tap you on the shoulder,

I didn’t really tap you on the shoulder,

But if I barely tap you on the shoulder, I’ve crossed a line.

But it’s the lightest of touches.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, yeah, time and space are the keys here, I think.

I love it that dad immediately went to the bodily functions for the explanation.

And the son’s got the classy one.

He’s talking about cliffs and falling.

Nice going, Simon.

Way to be the adult, kid.

You know, Grant, putting aside the part about pooping in one’s pants,

Simon really did ask a nuanced question, didn’t he?

Yes, he did.

Bravely asked it, indeed.