nigh-on

Now, despite my nigh-on bilingual skills, I'm going to be honest with you and admit that my knowledge of country music pretty much begins and ends with the word y'all.

Country Music Association Awards – live 2011

Yes, he said, finding a parking space in Soho was nigh-on impossible now, but charging people £4.80 per hour was not going to make them any more likely to want to come and dine.

Celebrities, cleaners and churchgoers join the issue dividing a nation: parking wars 2011

The European Commission proposals on implementing the Basel III capital-adequacy accord confirm a sad reality: The aim of imposing tougher and more comprehensible standards of robustness on banks is going to be nigh-on impossible to achieve.

EU's Proposal to Implement Basel III Undermines Spirit Geoffrey T. Smith 2011

When an author writes about Human Nature, and their characters represent this truly, then mistakes are nigh-on impossible to make, mo matter what 'genre' the story employs.

MIND MELD: What Book Introduced You to Science Fiction? 2009

So, you've got a cool SF environment to zip around in, more human and alien cultures than you can shake a stick at, and a ship that not only fuses human and alien engineering in an ingenious and self-consistent way, but happens to be nigh-on invulnerable, and - not inconsequentially - ends up looking pretty cool as well.

MIND MELD: The Best Spaceships in Written Science Fiction 2010

"We hear every damn day how fragile our country is," he said, nigh-on presidential candidatedly.

Jon Stewart rally: moderation breaks out in Washington crowd Hadley Freeman 2010

Ben ArnoldSeason two has been building and building so now, as we're well into the endgame with this penultimate episode, the tension is nigh-on unbearable.

TV highlights 06/07/2011: Jo Frost: Extreme Parental Guidance | The Removal Men | Afghanistan: The Unknown Country | The Perfect Suit | Justified | Syrian School 2011

Funny thing is, when I was nineteen and nigh-on to a mental/emotional/spiritual crack-up, it was a day gazing into the void out in the Monahans Sand Dunes that brought me round and helped me never to be so crazy again.

The natural beauty of desolate West Texas surrounding Marfa. | clusterflock 2009

As one of 2009's Edinburgh Comedy awards panellists, the Guardian's Paul MacInnes has just three weeks to see nigh-on 100 shows and score them out of 10.

This week's new comedy 2011

The true responsibility lies with the government who are inflicting the biggest cuts in local government history and creating nigh-on impossible problems for local government.

Social care cuts: 'The people concerned are invisible' 2011