wide of the mark
1
7.1
- idiom
- UK
:
fuera de lugar
- The student's answer was wide of the mark, failing to address the main question.
Examples
-
Sad to say, though, that the writing just falls wide of the mark.
Blog text (8) -
When Spanish and foreign politicians speak today of Spain as a "middle-level power," they are wide of the mark.
Academic text (1994) -
And some of the concerns in the new Thompson paragraph appear wide of the mark.
Academic text (2003) -
In fact, some of the earlier proposed solutions to the fuelwood crisis were wide of the mark.
Academic text (1999) -
Sacks was not completely wide of the mark.
Academic text (1998) -
He may have been wide of the mark, but he had nonetheless identified a problem.
Blog text (19) -
In some ways they guessed correctly; in others, investigators now know, they fell wide of the mark.
Academic text (2007) -
I see this sort of interpretation as wide of the mark, given Augustine's ambivalence.
Academic text (1990) -
An apposite effort may lead to success, while choosing a target wide of the mark or appropriating insufficient resources may result in damaging outcomes.
Academic text (2005) -
Since it might turn out that all of our samples are unrepresentative, our extrapolations from them might all be hopelessly wide of the mark.
Academic text (2001)
Synonyms
113
4.3
Not correct or exact, with mistakes
88
4.4
Missing the target or main point
16
6.5
Not accurate or correct
14
5.5
Not exact or clear enough to be useful
Antonyms
How Accurate
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'not accurate' is directly derivable from the parts: 'wide' conveys being far and 'mark' is a target, so 'wide of the mark' literally means 'far from the target' (i.e. incorrect). The preposition 'of' and the article are grammatical only and the spatial-to-evaluative mapping is cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents will likely infer the meaning.
Etymology
The phrase wide of the mark may come from old shooting or using a bow and arrow: if an arrow or bullet lands far wide of the mark, it misses the target. That's why today it means 'not accurate' or 'wrong'.