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Okay, let’s tackle this wonderfully weird little squiggle – affectionately dubbed by some of my admittedly rather eccentric linguistically-minded acquaintances as...
℠ 4️⃣₮ — what we stubbornly insist on abbreviating as, and frankly shuddering to write out, the Nearly There Man.
(I'm really leaning into that 4️⃣₮, you see? It just
sounds
right, it’s got a certain…gravitas.)
Now, technically, in its purest, most rigidly defined state, a Nearly There Man according to some rather stuffy theoretical linguists is the point of absolute proximity. It's the last possible incremental change needed to achieve something already substantially there. You know...the almost-but-not quite. Think a half-litre of milk that will become a full litre with a single, carefully measured dribble. But honestly? The whole concept is fundamentally unsettling. Because once you acknowledge it exists – the Nearly There Man—it implies that the thing already there isn't actually there . That reality itself is somehow…slippery and perpetually on the verge of being superseded by a slightly shifted state, the next, almost-but-not quite. It’s a cosmic itch we can never quite scratch. The term was initially coined by the tragically misunderstood, but undeniably fascinating, Dr. Erasmus Finch, who spent his entire life attempting to capture the precise shade of grey just beyond the point where a robin's
