a mile away
79
2.8
- idiom
:
a una milla de distancia
- You can see it a mile away.
- about a mile away
- less than a mile away
- a quarter of a mile away
He was about a mile away from the scene.
- He was about a mile away from the scene.
- And look at a forest from a half a mile away and you just see a mass of green.
- Mind you, I live about, like a little over half a mile away.
- So I went straight to a homeless facility not even half a mile away.
- You know, if I see like an apple tree a mile away, well, I can go over and pick an apple.
- There are plot holes galore, you can see things happening a mile away.
- They were talking with these Mossad guys in a building that was maybe, you know, a mile away from Langley.
- And on the day of the exam, I was just half a mile away from the school where the exam was being held.
- But I feel like boarding school either graduates like generic boarding school people who you can recognize a mile away or like complete misfits.
- But in air, both sound waves and especially light, well, you can see for miles, you can see things coming a mile away.
Examples
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I could smell you coming from a mile away.
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Luck and a strong southern wind brought it back to shore about a mile away.
Academic text (2010) -
Right now we are like half a mile away from the original class.
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Yeah, less than half a mile away from his mother.
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It's less than half a mile away from here.
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I think it's about a mile away to the river.
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I can spot her a mile away.
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Saw this coming a mile away.
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And now we live a mile away from each other.
Academic text (2017) -
You can see the lighthouse a mile away when the sky is clear.
Synonyms
6
3.6
Easy to see or notice even from far away
Antonyms
How Far
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is compositionally transparent: 'mile' (a unit of distance) combined with 'away' (from a place) directly yields the literal distance meaning, which a B1 learner who knows the words can derive. The figurative sense ('very obvious') is a clear distance-to-obviousness metaphor common across languages and follows an obvious extension of the literal meaning, so it remains predictable to learners.
Etymology
A mile away comes from imagining something one mile away, a distance you can still see or hear. Because you can notice it from far off, the phrase now also means 'very obvious' or 'easy to notice'.