“all but” - I hate that expression!

I'm fascinated by the idea that came to me that this person was expressing a peeve about a completely legitimate English construction and implying that it should not ever be there.

Admittedly, we all feel that way about some NEW construction, but new constructions are admittedly in the gray area.

I'm obviously having some sort of hormonally imbalanced day, but what it translated into was "Let's get rid of these complicated English forms that I can't understand." Yeah, that'll fix it.

I am purplexed as to why the MS Word grammar check insists on my using "is" after "all but one" rather than "are." It seems to me that the verb relates to the plural. I would not say, "all is interested." I would say, "all are interested." So why would it be correct to say, "all but one is interested"? Why wouldn't it be "all but one are interested"? Is the Microsoft grammar check mistaken, or am I?

To: Rich:
As we know, "Almost finished" and "Not finished" have nearly opposing definitions, therefore proving the construction "all but..." to be terrible!
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That statement is not a sane one.
"Almost finished" and "not finished" really do mean the same thing.

If some process or some piece of work is missing even one iota from being finished, then it is NOT finished. It could still be "almost finished".

If a surgeon operated on you and he/she did everything except for putting in one stitch, then our conclusion would have to be NOT finished (or unfinished).

You could suffer dearly from that missing stitch. You could bleed a lot.
The reasonable verdict would be "Guilty of medical malpractice."
DAW

'But' to mean 'except' has a long history - 'There but for the grace of God, go I' - 'I had no choice but to sign the contract'. - so, as others have said, the literal meaning of 'all but' is pretty close to 'everything except' - 'He all but killed me' - 'He did everything except kill me'. In fact the Free dictionary gives two meanings - everything (or everybody) except and almost.

Ironically Jun-Dai seems to have got closest to the mark. It's an idiom, it doesn't need to be analysed to death. And like scyllacat I suspect, I've never experienced the slightest misunderstanding when either using or hearing it. What's more, it was good enough for Shakespeare, apparently.

And Rich, if 'I'm all but finished', technically speaking yes it's true that I haven't (quite) finished yet (that's the only way I can see how 'all but' can mean 'not'). But the implied meaning is very different from 'I'm not finished' - Consider you're on a long boring walk - 'We're all but there' would be quite positive, while 'We're not there' would be rather negative. I don't really think you've proved anything to be terrible.:)

http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/all+but

Something strange happened in that first sentence - it should of course have read - I don't really see how you can purchase .... Unfortunately there are a couple of other typos as well.

Apparently even newspapers (well, the Sun) get confused with this one. The Sun writes:

With all but a monumental collapse now standing between Manchester United and a record 20th league title, all eyes turn to who will win the fight between the also rans for second place.

What they mean of course, is "With nothing but a monumental collapse ..."

I imagine the confusion arose because of the old meaning that but sometimes had of "only".

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4492

Oh, Warsaw Will, I agree with you emphatically.
"With all but a monumental collapse now standing between...." is truly horrid English.
Actually, it isn't even English, but rather it is gibberish.

By the way, "The Sun writes" is also nonsense.Whatever the "Sun" did, it was sometime in the past, so either the past tense or the present perfect tense is required. So, "the Sun wrote". Actually, it is probably more correct to state "the Sun printed". However, the "Sun" is a corporation, and corporations are incapable of doing anything like these things. So, in truth, "the employees of the Sun wrote" or "the employees of the Sun have been writing".

I have aslo seen weird statements like "John Jones writes" or "John Jones says", when in reality, John Jones has been dead for several years, hence he does not say or write anything at all anymore. Likewise, Winston Churchill says or writes nothing at all anymore.

So many people have lost sight or the fact that the present tense means RIGHT NOW. Here are some example: The Houses of Parliament stand in London.
A large statue of Abraham Lincoln sits in Washington, D.C.
The Moon orbits the Earth once every 29 days. It is doing so right now.

In contrast, the American, British, and Canadian Armies landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944. This was definitely an event in the past.

I don't need a grammar book in English because my mother was a professional teacher of American English for several decades. I learned from her.

You are arguing concerning that twisted mess called "British English".

No, not "In an editorial yesterday, the editorial writers of the Times stated that bla bla bla" but rather, "In an editorial yesterday, the editors of the Times stated bla bla bla"
The people who write editorials are called "editors" - but once again we are getting into the superiority of North American English (which includes Candian English, don't forget.)

In American English, we say that a short buiding "sits" somewhere, but a tall building strands somewhere. "Mr. Jones's house sits along Maple Street", but "The Empire State Building stands in New York City." "The White House sits along Pennsylvania Avenue", but "The Capitol Building stands on Capitol Hill."

So, do not get confused about the Houses of Parliament (buildings) sitting along the Thames, and the House of Commons (a group of people) sitting for a meeting.
Concerning the monuments of Washington, D.C., the Washington Monument stands, the statue of Abraham Lincoln sits (in a chair), but the statue of Thomas Jefferson stands (on its feet). All of these are in the present tense, indicating RIGHT NOW, and there is no need to use the present progressive form.

Also, the Lincoln Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial sit along the Potomac River, but it is not possible for the Washington Monument to do anything but stand. When this monument was completed, it was the world's tallest structure, surpassing the Great Pyramid of Egypt, and it remained the world's tallest structure until it was surpassed by a cathedral in Germany. Then, a few years later, that was surpassed by the Eiffel Tower. Some say that the Washington Monument is still the world's tallest stone structure because it does not have a metal framework at all. On the other hand, is the tallest one the cathedral in Germany? Or does that one have some metal framework? It is hard to find out because there are so many erroneous sources out there. Some of them do not mention the Washington Monument or the cathedral at all.

"Right now I write this comment," is perfectly fine language. It is not necessary to use the present progressive form, though that is the more common way.
I have read of a noteworthy play (maybe one of Shakespeare's) in which a character says, "I die." It was not necessary for him to say "I am dying," because "I die" means RIGHT NOW.

When I say, "The Moon orbits the Earth," and "The Earth orbits the Sun," these mean RIGHT NOW. It does not matter that they have done so for billions of years, and that they will do so for billions of years into the future, because my sentences tell of the situation right now. As for the Moon, even if the weather is bad over the entire continent, and nobody there can see the Moon in its orbit, we can measure its presense can its movement by radar.We know what it is doing.

On the other hand, I have read a book of "Noteworthy Last Words". In it, there is the story of a physician who was seriously ill. From time to time, he was taking his own pulse - until one time when he said "Stopped," and that was the end of the his life. He was using the word "stopped" as an adjective, but that means "right now".

Also, I have read that during the latter part of the 1800s, a criminal in England was taken to the gallows to be hanged. He was standing on the trap door with the noose around his neck. Then he decided to make a final declaration, but that was just as the trap sprung. HIs last words were supposedly, "I am J----" as the noose tightened around his neck. People have speculated that he intended to say, "I am Jack the Ripper." Is this true? Note that the verb "am" is in the present tense, and it means RIGHT NOW. He did not intend to say, "I was Jack the Ripper."

Unfortunately I can't claim to have had a mother who was a teacher, but I can claim to be one myself. Putting aside your insults to British English, which of course are just a lot of prejudiced nonsense, I'll try and answer your points one by one:

1. Editorials - as far as I'm aware these are rarely written by the editor in person, but by a group of editorial staff, especially if the editorial is not the first leader. But anyway, apart from your good self, most of us wouldn't mention the person or people. That was my point. Here area a few example I got by googling "in an editorial the times said":

In a recent Sunday editorial, the New York Times said Johnson & Johnson “has a lot of explaining to do” (Rottenstein Law Group)

China Should Speak Out About Hacker Attacks, Global Times Says (Bloomberg)

In a series of reported stories and a strong unsigned editorial, The New York Times has vividly illustrated the faults with the Federal Trade Commission’s disappointing ruling in its antitrust investigation of Google. (FairSearch.org)

2. A building sits or stands somewhere - I don't know why you think this is specifically American; we do the same. But that wasn't the problem. When you said that the Houses of Parliament stand in London, that's about general time, not necessarily about right now. And when you did use the words "right now" to talk about the moon, you rightly went into Present progressive, "It is doing so now", because "It does so right now" would have been ungrammatical. I have to tell you that "Right now I write this comment," would be marked wrong in any English Certificate exam for foreign learners. Shakespeare and other writers are allowed poetic licence.

As for your famous last words bit, when talking about existence, the verb "to be" is a stative verb and not used in the progressive form, so you are right there, but this is not true with most verbs. To be honest, your verbs "sit" and "stand" in your meaning were also stative. I said they were bad examples not because the grammar wasn't correct, but because "right now" is not the main use of Present simple; it can only work with stative verbs. And stative verbs, by their very nature, describe states: things which don't change much day-to-day.

For example, your sentence "A large statue of Abraham Lincoln sits in Washington, D.C", sounds the sort of thing you might read in a guide book. Yes, it is there right now, but it was also there yesterday and it will be there tomorrow. This is about a fairly permanent state of affairs. And the criminal was still alive (just), so of course he would say "I am" - this is an existential "I am".

Anyway, this is what one of the biggest ESL sites (American, not British!) has to say about the use of present tenses. It no doubt explains it better than I am doing:

http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/simplepresent.html
http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/presentcontinuous.html

I notice you've said nothing about historical present or present tenses being used for future reference, so perhaps you now accept them.

Warsaw Will: I have a hard time understanding that the statue of Abraham Lincoln sits in Washington, D.C., because it sits in a chair, just as I sit in a chair as I write this. What is so hard about this? I could recommend that you look up photographs of the interior of the Lincoln Memorial. You can find these on the Internet.

Notice that "you look" is in the present tense. Look away for ten seconds, and then you look again. Any of those moments is "right now", and you can repeat the process as many times as you chose to do so.

Also, I actually wrote "the Houses of Parliament sit along the Thames in London", and not "stand", as you misread and miscopied. "Sit" was the contrast that I ws trying to make, compared with the Empire State Building, which "stands" in New York City. Stop in the name of the Queen! You made a salient mistake. Why?

The statue of Thomas Jefferson "stands" in the Jefferson Memorial because the figure of Jefferson stands on its feet in an upright position. That was the contrast that I was making: Lincoln sits but Jefferson stands.

I didn't say anything about the "historical present" because that is rarely seen or heard of in the United States in American or Canadian products.
One big problem that we face here concerns documentaries on TV that were made in the U.K. or in Ireland. These have narrated paragraphs in which the tenses of the verbs flip back and forth between the past tense and the present tense in a random order. In other words, they do so "willy nilly" or "ad litem".

There is absolutely no concern in the consistency of the use of the tenses.

Furthermore, there are odd statements like "the team decided". A team does not have a brain, so a team cannot make any decisions whatsover.
Here in North America, we say, "the leader of the team decided".

Then, if those decisions are terribly unpopular, you Britons could say, "the team threw the leader overboard to the sharks".
In America, we do not have too much of a history of mutinies.
We do not have stories of Captain Bligh or Henry Hudson.
D.A.W.

To: Warsaw Will:
"It does so right now" would have been ungrammatical.
Quite to the contrary: "It does so right now" is perfectly good English, at least in North America, where over 300,000,000 English speakers live.
Does the Moon orbit the Earth? "It does so right now," or "It still does so right now."

Q: Will your bank give change for a $100 bill?
A: It does so right now. Let's go!

Q: Does Vanguard 1 orbit the Earth?
A: It still does so right now, and it has done so ever since 1958.

D.A.W.

To Warsaw Will:
You do not understand how newspapers operate in the large cities of the United States and Canada.
Here, a large newspaper does not have just one Editor, but rather it has many editors. Some of the higher-ranking of these have more explanatory titles such as these:
Editor-in-Chief
Associate Editor
Assistant Editor
Managing Editor (one with many business responsibilities)
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
Science Editor
Sports Editor

Naturally, the newspaper's editorials that go on the editorial page are the responsibility of the Editorial Page Editor. Letters to the Editor go there, too, and actually the "editorial page" can be two or more pages long.
Furthermore, in the largest cities, the Editorial Page Editor has assistant editors who work for him or her.
When submitting a letter to the editor, the proper greetings are "Dear Editor", "Dear Mr. Editor", or "Dear Madame Editor". "To Whom It May Concern" also works.

To be an editor for a large newspaper here is rather like being a vice-president of a large corporation, which might have 25 or 30 vice-presidents.

Hence, "The editor of the New York Times wrote" or "The editors of the New York Times wrote" are both correct. In the first case, it is understood that the New York Time has many editors.

D.A.W.

@D.AW. - I don't see why are you are still going on about a building sitting or standing somewhere; I have absolutely no problem with that. I just find using the example of something that has been there for a hundred year or so, and will continue to do so in the future a strange example of "right now". But let's leave that one as we're obviously never going to agree.

Let's talk about the team instead. This is simply a different way of thinking between Americans and the British. You prefer formal agreement and we prefer notional agreement. We often see a team, or any other group, such as the government or a company or newspaper, as being a group of people rather than a single entity, so we say that the government are introducing a new law, or the company treat their employees well etc.

I know Americans feel uncomfortable with this, but I feel equally uncomfortable when I hear a family referred to as it, or that the family is coming for Christmas. For you it's an entity, for me it's a group of live people. Neither of us are more correct than the other; it's just a different way of seeing things. Just like American humour is different from British humour. Because we look at things slightly differently.

But now you've opened Pandora's box, I'd be fascinated to know what other aspects of British English lead you to call it "that twisted mess". I'm sure it'd be great fun. I do so enjoy your lectures.

@Warsaw Will
Warsaw Will says:
@D.A.W. - I don't see why are you are still going on about a building sitting or standing somewhere; I have absolutely no problem with that.

I do not like people misquoting me and lying about what I said or wrote!
You have never apoligized about that, either.

You are obviously a habitual liar and a Philistine, too.
Am I making myself clear? You lied about what I wrote.
Now, you want to sweep it under the rug ??
Shame on you. Go eat manure.

D.A.W.

Dear Philistine:

I have had BRITISH people tell me that the phrase "the government are", such as is used by cheap tabloids and magazines there, STINKS TO HIGH HEAVEN.
Of course, in North America, we agree completely.

Likewise, my British friends have told me that "the Commonwealth are" likewise stinks to high heaven.

These are not "matters of opinion". These are matters of sane versus foolish.
If you wish to ally yourself with the usage of cheap tabloids and magazines, you MUST not present that as some form of Standard English.
You do not even know the difference between singular and plural.

D.A.W.

Something that happens "right now" happens at any instant of time that you care to choose, within reason.

The earth orbits the sun right now.
Pure water tastes good right now.
The Eiffel Tower stands in Paris right now.
The River Thames flows through London right now.
The United States has 50 states right now.

D.A.W.

@D.A.W. - I knew it would be fun! And with such a gentleman, too!

This is from the American Heritage Dictionary, quoted in the Free Dictionary:

"Usage Note: In American usage government always takes a singular verb. In British usage government, in the sense of a governing group of officials, takes a plural verb: The government are determined to follow this course. See Usage Note at collective noun."

From New Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage:

"In BrE it is in order to use either a singular or plural verb after most collective nouns, so long as attendant pronouns are made to follow suit: 'when the jury returns to consider its verdict 'or when the jury return to consider their verdict'. The same principle applies to all the main collectives like 'army, audience, clan, company, crew, court, crew, folk, government, group, herd'. By contrast, in AmE the choice is much more restricted.''

From BBC Learning English - "For example, when we’re talking about the government we can say – “The government has won the election.” Or we can say “The government have won the election.” This depends if we see the government as a collection of individuals"

And from some well-known "tabloids":

"The Government are listening at last, must be election time" (Daily Telegraph)

"According to the TUC, the government are big meanies" (The Economist)

Sir Alex Ferguson is convinced Manchester United have a stronger squad now than their 1999 Treble-winning campaign. (The Independent)

" Liverpool have a corner, and about 20 seconds later Arsenal nearly score" (The Guardian - NB Historical Present!)

"As noble Lords will be aware, the Government have introduced the test to rectify the loophole which has occurred as a result of the decision in the Parkins v Sodexho case." Viscount Younger of Leckie, speaking in the House of Lords (Hansard - 23 Feb 2013)

"and of course the Government have set a target of 25% of procurement from small firms, too" Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, speaking in the House of Commons (Hansard 6 Nov 2012)

"The Labour Party are delighted to be able to offer our members a special discount on a subscription to New Statesman magazine." (Labour Party website)

"The Conservative Party are not responsible for webcasting or any other form of transmission" (Conservative Party website)

Just Google them to check.

@D.A.W. A propos apologising:

You originally wrote (just check back - February 24, 2013, 6:25pm):

"So many people have lost sight or the fact that the present tense means RIGHT NOW. Here are some example (sic): The Houses of Parliament stand in London.
A large statue of Abraham Lincoln sits in Washington, D.C.
The Moon orbits the Earth once every 29 days. It is doing so right now."

I wrote (February 26, 2013, 11:02am):
"When you said that the Houses of Parliament stand in London, that's about general time"

You wrote (February 26, 2013, 12:08pm):
"Also, I actually wrote "the Houses of Parliament sit along the Thames in London", and not "stand", as you misread and miscopied"

You wrote (February 27, 2013, 1:06pm):
"I do not like people misquoting me and lying about what I said or wrote!
You have never apoligized (sic) about that, either.
You are obviously a habitual liar and a Philistine, too.
Am I making myself clear? You lied about what I wrote."

Well, once again I'm in total agreement with you. By the way, most people use copy and paste these days; you might remember that the next time you accuse somebody of miscopying what you have written!

Now I would say a good dollop of humble pie was called for, wouldn't you?

@D.A.W. - I was going to let this drop, but I think I'll follow your habit of serial comments. Coincidentally, I happened to be doing present tenses with a student this morning. This is from Intelligent Business Intermediate (published by Pearson Longman):

The present simple describes:
a) facts that will not change
b) regular events and processes
c) a scheduled event (in the future)

The present continuous (aka progressive) describes
a) things happening now
b) temporary situations
c) future arrangements

I understand this is a very old post, but I'm with Martin on "all but". I'm sure that you can tell, but I'm not particularly gifted in English theory. Anyway, what I find problematic with "all but" is that, while it may mean "almost" when followed by an adjective, if one has never been exposed to that phrasing and reads the sentence word-for-word, it has no conclusion.

"All" is synonymous with "anything" so, to just read it with out the special exemption, "all but " means literally anything but extinct. The population in question can be declining, increasing, remaining steady, anything! I guess I'm saying the same thing people who were citing "everything except" as how they interpreted it, and I understand idioms are exceptions by nature, but when it comes to "all" and "but", I can't think of a single context to makes either word a synonym for "almost" except for in the case of "all but".

@Rory - On your second point, "all" is certainly synonymous with "everything" but it's anything but (except) synonymous with "anything"! Would you rather give somebody anything of yours they wanted, or everything of yours they wanted?

There is also the expression "anything but" which is very different in meaning from "all but", meaning "just the opposite". This example is from Cambridge Dictionaries -

"She's meant to be really nice but she was anything but nice when I met her."
= she wasn't at all nice, in fact just the opposite

We could compare that with:

"She's meant to be really nice but she all but ignored me at the party."
= she almost completely ignored me, i.e. she did everything except completely ignore me.

http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/anything+but

You finish off by saying that you can't think of a single context to makes either word a synonym for "almost", and that's correct, they only mean almost when taken together, where "but" has its original meaning of 'except'. (Its more familiar use as a conjunction came into English later). And there are plenty of examples of "but" meaning except, including "There but for the grace of God, go I", which I've already quoted.

As camryn has explained, "all but" really means "almost completely", rather than simply "almost". And it doesn't really mean the opposite of what it suggests at all.

Martin quotes - “Such actions were all but unheard of then”, using camryn's explanation we could read this as "Such actions were everything except (completely) unheard of then" - i.e. mostly unheard of.

But in the end, I don't think analysing it too much is really going to help. Just accept it as an idiom. Nobody has to use it of course, and for many of us (older ones, perhaps) understanding it simply comes naturally. And it's useful to know when you're doing some reading :

"why he should change his mind when it was all but done, she could not perceive" - Jane Austen

"But as for Girton, the matter was talked over calmly, without either tears or kisses, and it was all but settled that Janet should go there in the autumn" - Charles Dickens

"She was all but worshipped by the peasantry around her" - Anthony Trollope

"that she's all but ready to fall to pieces in this same time" - Captain Marryat

"true, she all but consented, and did consent in a sort" - William Hazlitt

Admittedly, it's not that common, though. But then there's also the sub-idiom "in all but name" as in "They're married in all but name". - http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/in+all+but+name

I've written a blog post on this and similar expressions for foreign learners:

http://random-idea-english.blogspot.com/2013/02/expressions-with-all-but-none-but-but.html

I don't see anyone giving a clear answer to the grammatical issue addressed in the topic.

Plenty of people use it incorrectly, and it certainly is annoying. They use it for effect, when it just doesn't work, because they really mean something like "well it was pretty much [this]", which breaks it's own meaning.

Someone near the top said "All but one." This is the right way of using it as a "nearly" meaning, because you are setting up a group and then eliminating almost all of it. Not a sloppy "the civilization was all but destroyed" when they mean it actually got destroyed and there is no remaining item to be "all but" about.

I sometimes use "all but" to mean "there are possibilities but definitely not this one." For instance: "In all but tiny quantities, the poison would definitely kill you." Any quantity you can imagine, that isn't tiny, fits the bill.

So it's a matter of where your focus is intended. You are either eliminating everything except for the last item, or you are separating the bulk away from the item to be eliminated.

Dawson's Creek Season 3 Series 1 at 07:38 hrs

The rites of passage, which once marked growing up, are all but extinct...

This is actually the one expression in English that - even after decades of using the language - my Dutch-language brain still has to actively translate. I'm always aware of this rapid 'no, hang on, this means the opposite of what you think it means', and then it makes sense again.
I just ran into it in an article just now, and for some reason decided to Google if I'm really the only one.
I'm really glad to have found this forum as a result, as it confirms I'm not alone in this. You can argue the meaning of the phrase in both directions, but the wrong interpretation comes closest to the Dutch expression 'allesbehalve', meaning 'anything but', which sounds like it should have the same meaning as 'all but'. I guess my confusion comes from that.

@Berend "but" comes from the same word-root as "buitan" (outside) in Dutch; and in English (and Frisian) also means "apart from". So "she all but died" really means "she did everything (all) apart from dying.

The fact that this thread started in 2004 and it now is 2017 implies that this is a problematic expression. After reading some of the comments, I see three possible meanings "all but" can have, on top of the two standard ones.

Using a boxing metaphor "all but lost" could mean:

1. "All except": He has taken and given a lot of hits, fought hard, but not lost. => He hasn't lost.

2. "Nearly": He has taken a lot of hits, is fatigued, not quite lost, but is at the brink of losing. All possible negative things that could have happened have, except losing. => He is close to losing.

3. "Not at all": He has taken and given a lot of hits, is fatigued, but he surely hasn't lost. => He's not close to losing or is winning.

The third sense is not in dictionaries, but that's how I understand it in some contexts. "-That guy is such a loser. -He's all but a loser." => He could be a horrible person, a retard, etc., but he surely isn't a loser.

Technically, the listed senses might be the same, but the emphasis is different. What's the status of the boxing match? Is it (1) unclear, (2) moving towards a loss, or (3) definitely not moving towards a loss/moving towards a win?

I may not be entirely accurate in how interpret where the emphasis is, but my point is that the emphasis is different between the three sense.

I hate the way people misuse the word "concerning" these days, i.e. " Her headaches are very concerning." Concerning what? Where did it start? Why does it go on? Thank you for listening. I'm blowing off steam. It's not politically correct to be grammatically correct these days.

I think we're as stuck with "all but" as we are with "each and every."

People have lost sight of the fact that there is an "ellipsis" here. In other words, something has been left out, and the result is idiomatic in English.
In these discussions, "but" means "except", and the fact is that "except what?" has been left out. The ellipsis is "a negligible amount" or "a negligible number".
The expression, "The Colonials were all but eliminated by the Cylons," means "Except for a negligible number of them, the Colonials were eliminated by the Cylons."
Likewise, "The fighting strength of the boxer was all but extinguished," means "Except for a negligible amount, the fighting strength of the boxer was gone."
People get all but completely confused when they do not recognize the idiomatic nature of some expressions.
Please do not try to interpret them literally. You will all but lose your mind!

It doesn't mean the opposite, it means quite what it says. 'All but' means 'almost' or 'nearly'. The confusion comes from the elision inherent in the phrase. "They were all but exterminated by the Jedi" could also be written "They were hunted, tortured, maimed, and killed--all but exterminated by the Jedi". In this example, the reason 'all but' does not include verbs like 'tickled' is due to the principle employed in all communications, 'noscitur a sociis' (latin, 'it is known from its associates'), which requires phrases remain topical.

I agree, I have found "all but" to be all but intuitive.

I also dislike this idiom, but not because it means the opposite of what it suggests. Rather, I dislike this idiom for the same reason I dislike saying "everything except" in its place; both expressions are vague.

What I mean by this is that, while saying that an army was "all but" wiped out certainly CAN mean that everything was done short of wiping it out, another grammatically correct way to interpret those words is to assume that you also tried giving the army puppies, letting them go, etc.

So it is vague in the sense that it can both nearly mean the opposite of what is intended and also something very close to what is intended. However, most English speakers have accepted that the idiom means only one of those two possible things.

The reason this frustrates me is that many idioms are not ambiguous. Ambiguity is the death of language. It is important that people know what we mean when we say what we say, and the "all but" idiom lacks context for making its meaning clear.

This is particularly important for people who do not speak English as their native language. For those people, it's important to have idioms have a reasonable explanation as how to they gained their meaning. For "all but", however, it seems the choice of what it means was simply arbitrary. It could be used to mean one of two things, and one way was used more often than another, so that became the meaning. But it still has another possible, literal meaning, leading to the ambiguity if one is unfamiliar with the generalized decision due to years of forming the modern vernacular.

Jun-Dai is a pretentious asshat, or at least he was in 2004. Also yes "all but" is still a garbage phrase 15 years later.

When used in that way, it is being used wrongly, and has somehow become common in the US.
Just as when they say "I could care less" but mean the opposite. It's not that the phrase is strange, it's the diction of the speaker that is strange. In countries that are not the US, people say "I couldn’t care less" and mean it to be understood the way it was spoken.

The plates are like multiple baby's they sound like a shattered window being dragged by the river.

I absolutely agree! I've seen plenty of movies and tv-shows etc. where "all but" has been used in different, opposite meanings. Really annoying stuff!

Also consider these constructions, where "all but" can be replaced by "except" :
"All but the oldest fruit was still edible."
"All fruit but the oldest was still edible."
"Close all windows but this one."

And also the "anything but" which means "not at all", "as far from X as possible"
"anything but ordinary".

Cheers
b

English being my fourth language, you are all confusing me. I spent my precious time reading all your comments, but all I got was nothing but confusion.

I am confused by the term .I always thought it would have meant as it suggests "all except... but English is difficult

I always thought it meant all except Although the context clues of the phrase when used in any sentence contradicted what I believed.