endler har rätt. "All but over" betyder att något är
så gott som över, men ändå inte riktigt. Jämför det
fetade partiet i meningarna nedan med det
kursiva förtydligandet.
Jag minns själv att jag blev förvirrad av "all but"-uttrycket i en bok av Bill Bryson, ta t ex hans kommentar om "italiensk" mat i USA.
Citat:
Many 'classic' Italian dishes are in fact New World creations... even spaghetti and meatballs were all products designed to satisfy the American palate. By the 1950s Italian-American food was all but unrecognizable to visitors from Italy. A businessman from Turin might peruse a menu in an Italian restaurant in Chicago and not be able to decipher a single item.
Alltså var maten
så gott som oigenkännlig. Här är ytterligare ett stycke, nu om det engelska språkets standardisering:
Citat:
Before 1400, it was possible to tell with some precision where in Britain a letter or manuscript was written just from the spellings. By 1500, this had become all but impossible. The development that changed everything was the invention of the printing press. This brought a much-needed measure of uniformity to English spelling.
http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/englis...1/all_but.html
Den här engelskläraren förklarar ytterligare:
Citat:
Or we could say "He was all but ruined by the stock-market crash"—he lost most of his money, but kept a little. Sometimes we can use it in an exaggerated form: "We hiked all day and I was all but dead when we got home." I wasn't really almost dead, but it sounds more exciting than being "really tired."
Däremot är "everyone but me" detsamma som det svenska "alla utom jag".