I admit that this post is almost too pedantic, but this last example is on the verge of being technically right, but still wrong. Or vice versa.
Age is a one-way process, so I believe that almost should never be used like that.
Let’s use the example of buying beer. The concept is “underage” (similar thing but easier than “too young to be a concert violinist”). A girl of 21 as of yesterday is not “almost underage”. We would say she is barely of age, hardly out of her training pants, or something similar, but neither “almost a teenager” or “almost underage” work, because she has already become a teenager/of age and the concepts of teenager and of age are so strongly “one way” that we wouldn’t ever apply almost to them unless the person had not yet achieved those ages. Similarly, it would be odd to say that she was almost 20 in the context of “too young to buy beer”
I would accept, though with reservation, “She’s almost too young to buy beer/to be a concert violinist”. I think, though, it would only work in the context of a continuum of ages, like:
“She’s too young to be a senior citizen, she’s almost too young to be a concert violinist, hell, she’s almost too young to buy beer, but she is old enough to drive”.
It seems to me it’s because rather than her approaching an age, we’re actually discussing her location on a line, and we’re saying we would place her close to a marker on one end of the scale. This is what your 20 year old violinist statement is doing, but though I would understand what you meant by “She’s almost a teenager” or “She’s almost a child”, both phrases strike me, at least, as being subtly weird simply because those are concepts of age that are strong enough to override the context of a sliding scale.
I think I did use a weak example–I was in a hurry–but not a wrong one. “Almost a child,” which you brought up, is a better example. And while the arrow of time is strongly one way as you point out, it’s a very good example of why the concept of “almost” is tied to the notion of being close to, but not attaining, the ideal. It’s not necessarily tied to the direction from which one is approaching that ideal, either in quantity or time. “Almost a child” and “barely an adult” are similar ways of saying almost the same thing, but there are times when only “almost a child” will do. A mentally handicapped adult with an innocent sense of wonder or joy over the seemingly mundane would frequently be described as “almost a child” or “almost childlike” because there is a Child ideal out there to which they are being compared. “Barely an adult” will not do.
The point is not so much which usage you might prefer as it is that “almost” is not bound simply by quantity or direction of approach to the Ideal–i.e. from over or under, above or below, etc. It does mean “less than” but often what it is less than is the Ideal (Child, in this case) and not the quantity (age, in this case).
I’d say that -1C IS freezing. Freezing is a range of temperatures, normally 0C and colder, so -1 is freezing, it is also almost melting, but it is not almost freezing.
