ames ace
- noun
- Informal
:
cerca de lograr
- She was an ames ace away from getting the job she wanted.
Examples
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The soccer team came within ames ace of winning the championship.
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The explorers were within ames ace of reaching the summit before the storm forced them back.
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He was an ames ace in the final race.
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She came in second, just an ames ace away from winning.
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The marathon runner finished just an ames ace behind the winner.
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She was an ames ace away from achieving her dream of becoming a doctor.
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They were an ames ace from breaking the school record in the relay race.
Synonyms
Nearly succeeding but failing at the last moment
Very nearly achieving something
Almost happening or being done but not yet
How Close to Success
Surface Forms
Morphology
ames + ace
The phrase is opaque because one constituent, 'ames', is not a recognizable English word and provides no clear compositional meaning to combine with 'ace' (a skilled person). The defined sense ('very close to succeeding but just falling short') does not follow from the literal parts and shows no obvious cross-linguistic or morphological logic, so a B1 learner would not be able to derive it from the constituents.
Etymology
The expression ames ace may come from an old card game in a town called Ames, where the final winning card was an ace. If a player needed that one ace but missed it, people said they were an ames ace away, so the phrase now means 'very close to succeeding but just falling short'.